Never Again Unto the Breach
by freshneverfrozen
Summary: The first time he sees her, he is not lost, not so much as he is at a loss. When her eyes meet his, undaunted and either oblivious or simply uncaring to the importance of who he is, he feels it in his bones and he recognizes the slight tremor within his chest for what it is- the unknown. Arthur Maxson/FSS. Some hints of Danse/FSS. BOS story spoilers. Smut.
1. Chapter 1

_(As of August 8, 2016) I have decided to re-post the current chapters of the this story. Previously, the version on Archive was the M-rated version while this one remained a strong T. I've decided to take my chances and post the chapters as they were originally written. Which is to say, smut-laden and filthy as hell. Apologies to those of you who may have preferred the T rating, but given my current schedule, it's simply too much work for me to try and edit down the chapters and then re-write filler. So, if you're not into literary masturbation, perhaps pass on this piece. I no longer issue trigger warnings either, so with any material that ensues, I trust you to adult yourselves._

 _Rated M - naughty, naughty four-letter words, actual sex, thinking about sex, and...M stuff._

 _Thanks as always to new and old readers alike_

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The first time he sees her, he is not lost, not so much as he is at a loss. She's nothing but quiet authority and poise - maternal, he thinks, despite her young face. Remarkable only in the nature of her peculiar, self-righteous brand of condescension. As though the single cock of one groomed eyebrow could match him for every harsh syllable and barked order. One look at her reveals that she's untouched by the Commonwealth grit. Certainly, he can tell she's been hiking for days on end, her pants scuffed with dust and her unwashed hair plastered to her scalp. Even so, she holds herself tirelessly. There is no defeat about her, no weight from the acceptance of a fate that's out of her hands.

It's impressive. Just as it is unnerving.

When her eyes meet his, undaunted and either oblivious or simply uncaring to the importance of his title, he knows for certain that he has a problem at hand. He feels it in his bones as she looks him over with those curious, cold eyes. It is years of habit and drilled muscle memory triggered by a single look from her that cause his back to straighten, his shoulders to square, and he recognizes the slight tremor of uncertainty within himself for what it is.

He is under inspection and in that brief moment, the world turns on its head and she is his commanding officer and he a recruit waiting for approval.

She seems to grant it after a long breath, one shared between both of them that fights even now for dominance between their bodies.

Even then, he fights the urge to relax even a fraction, fearful, _no_ , not _fearful_ , rather concerned that those eyes might see it as weakness and then he will be well and truly lost. Swept underfoot by this stranger and the tide that follows in her wake. And that is something he cannot, will not, allow.

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She likes to think she has enough self-awareness to know exactly why her mind lingers on this new Elder hours after she has departed from his presence, even with the deafening, mind-numbing whir of the vertibird around her.

She's not one for fooling herself.

He's like the one who came before him, the one whose blue eyes still break her heart every morning when she opens her own and the nuclear sunlight burns away her dreams and she remembers, agonizingly, that _he's_ not there beside her. That he never will be again.

When she had taken those first echoing steps into the belly of the zeppelin, her eyes had found this new man within moments, seeking him out without her permission. Broad shoulders that lead to a powerful back, hands clasped behind him rigidly as he peered out over all that was his. So very much like the other had done, the one who was hers once - only he had done the very same in the mornings while she made breakfast, looking out the picture window at the yard, not at countless meters of steel and railing.

"Nate" had been her first thought when she had laid eyes on the Brotherhood of Steel's Elder. Nate Nate Nate Natenatenatenate -

 _No_ .

Not Nate. Never again Nate.

Maxson is his name, and he is all sharp edges and petulant, child-soldier eyes. Maybe Nate would have been turned out similarly if he'd stayed in the service. If a Red's bullet hadn't blown out his shoulder and sent him home to his wife and their cul-de-sac. Yes, Nate had left the military. But the military had never left Nate. She recalls the way her husband would often speak more sharply than he intended - out of habit, he once told her, his head hung sheepishly with that apple pie-blond hair dipping into his eyes. Half the time, even Nate's 'good mornings' had sounded like he was snapping orders.

 _"Yes, sir, I will have a good morning, sir, yes, sir!"_ That had been the running joke between them, the one she would crack to remind Nate that he was home, that he was safe.

She doubts that this Maxson is as easy to quail about anything. She knows within minutes of meeting him that he has none of Nate's softness. Just his eyes and his bearing and -

The deep monotone that is slowly becoming familiar snaps her out of her reverie as the power armor's microphone crackles and spits in her ear.

"Think on your own time, soldier. I need you sharp."

For a moment before a smile splits her lips, she wonders idly if Paladin Danse has a heart rate monitor programmed somewhere in her power suit that sends him readings. It wouldn't surprise her; how else could he read her so readily amidst the heap of metal that hides her face between a set of massive robotic shoulders? Unless he's just that in tune with the people under his command. Yes, something tells her that is the more likely answer.

She has no time to ponder anything further as the vertibird banks sharply toward a sudden right and someone screams for her to pick up the minigun and cut down the abominations below. That is something she can do.

Shortly thereafter, a field of dead mutants lays bleeding in the wake of her fury and she is left on empty, with nothing but her thoughts to sate her.

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	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

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Maxson watches her. Or rather, he observes as she passes down the stairs and out onto the deck below where he can see her from his window. She has left the mess hall and is bound now for a vertibird hovering nearby. Her sponsor trails behind her and Maxson is suddenly inexplicably amused by the fact that even a paladin of Danse's stock is so cowed by the tiny woman, who by mere presence alone seems to stand not an inch under ten feet tall.

Below, Danse stands back as the woman proceeds with the most graceless of series of movements Maxson has thus far witnessed from her and lumbers into the waiting aircraft as well as she can in the confines of a few hundred pounds of armor.

When the vertibird is no longer in sight. Maxson turns away from the observation window and all at once the exhaustion slams into him. He has time now that she is gone and duties have been assigned and he has not slept decently since the Prydwen's shadow first crept over the Commonwealth. So it is that he makes his way to the main deck above, only to bypass all offers of dinner for the sanctity of his room. His quarters are not as stark as many of the crew would believe. This is his home. The only place that feels like he belongs as much to it as it does to him.

This evening, however, it feels as though the room has been invaded, like an enemy force is creeping closer from the dark corners and beneath the door. Tossing vainly in his rack more times than he'd like to admit, Maxson finally sits up with the realization that sleep has broken its promise and abandoned him. His bare feet, with their officer's callouses, touch the cold floor, and then he's up and bound for the file cabinet that has been taunting him since he locked the room door. There is nothing to do but to open it and pluck from it the newest folder, the one labeled "Talbot, Eulalia."

Hers is an absurd name. Always will be. Had been when he'd first read it in Danse's report, and even more so when he'd heard it uttered from her own lips. An old-fashioned name out of time and place. Uncommon and not seen for two hundred-odd years.

Talbot, Eulalia - age unknown, occupation unknown, birthplace unknown, unknown, unknown...

There is no more in the file now than there was the first time he had read it. Nothing but banal performance reports, a list of the inventory granted to her upon commission, and a brief physical from the doctor on board.

And then he sees it. Scribbled in the margin of her medical page by Knight-Captain Cade. "Vault Dweller," it says and there is a note of 111 just below. In retrospect, Maxson is fully aware that he should have guessed as much upon meeting her. Shuffling through a few more pages and finding nothing of interest, he puts the file away and returns to his bed. It is not much, not half of what he would prefer to have on the woman, but it is valuable nonetheless. It is an answer to why she shines so brightly, so pristinely among the general grime of the crew. An answer to why her eyes spark with such morbid amazement rather than hatred each time he mentions mutants or synths or any other scum that inhabits the wasteland below.

His need for answers temporarily placated, Maxson closes his eyes and passes the next several hours alone, save for his thoughts.

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* * *

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For a man so well loved by his crew, Talbot cannot remember a time when she has seen Maxson dine amongst them. That is why, when she and Danse come rolling in from the armory to find the Elder reclined back in one of the mess chairs, surrounded by brothers and sisters, she stops in her tracks. Behind her, Danse grunts, his large body barreling straight into her back as he, too, comes to an unintended halt.

"Knight?" The paladin asks, half annoyed, but mostly curious as to what has stilled his charge so suddenly.

But she waves him off and offers only a cursory glance of apology before resuming her path to the long line of hungry soldiers that waits ahead. She is not a weak-willed woman, more stubborn for the sake of spite than she is from any actual nature of hers. Yet, it takes every ounce of willpower within her not to steal peeks at the young Elder each time a new colorless blob of sustenance is spooned onto her tray. The cut of his body, from the way he leans back just far enough to appear comfortable but ready to spring up in an instant, to the relaxed splay of his fingers over the tabletop - his pointer finger crooked and tapping. All of it - it screams familiarity. It's too similar and it is everything she can do not to turn and look and make sure, make doubly damn sure, that it isn't her husband there, waiting for her to come and join him. Only logic stops her. Because logically, she knows that Nate is gone and that Nate, if it was him, would have definitely had his ankles crossed, toes pointed up, instead of planted firmly on the floor as Maxson does.

Her nerves have almost calmed, reduced only to the white-knuckling around the tray, when Talbot finally turns from the mess line in search of a place to sit. Despite everything she has sworn not to do, she looks to Maxson and sees that he is watching her and his eyes are blue, so blue, blue like home and family and Nate and it is only Danse's quick reflexes that steady her plate before it slips from her hands.

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	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

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Her hands, scarred and tough now after so many months above ground, make quick work of the repairs to her chestpiece. The workbench is solid and reassuring and she's glad to press her weight against it while she works. She operates on autopilot, some would say almost synth-like, and her thoughts are far away from the empty armory. Everyone else has gone to bed. Even Danse left her for his rack not long after climbing out of his power armor.

She hates the silence. Despises it. She had spent 200 years in it and the lack of distraction causes a fear to sink into her bones that makes her hands work fast and carelessly. The footsteps behind her are greeted with a silent prayer of thanks and Talbot doesn't care who is there, so long as she is not alone. She half expects it to be her paladin come to check on her but when she realizes the steps are too light, too slow, she knows that it is not Danse standing at the entryway.

"Shouldn't you be asleep, Knight?"

The voice is all at once like nails on a blackboard and as soothing as ice-cream on sun burnt lips. Though her insides swirl, she takes a steadying breath, pretending in her mind that she is doing nothing other than rising from the bench to address a judge. The armory becomes a courtroom and she an advocate, sleek and calm and ready to defend.

"Maxson," she greets him, letting his title pass unacknowledged. They are equals here, she decides, and he needs to understand as much. His Brotherhood rhetoric has no place in her life after hours.

"Knight," he says again and if he knows that she's staring at the smooth patch of skin between his eyebrows and not his eyes, he does not show it. Talbot wonders momentarily if he knows her full name. Of course, she decides. He likely just considers himself above using it.

"Got orders for me? It's not even muster yet."

She takes a moment to turn and place the screwdriver in her hands away in the toolbox and each beat of her heart is a much needed chance to better brace herself for the onslaught that is coming. When she turns back, she is ready and it is she who takes a few steps nearer and closes the field.

It is only when his large hands curl in on themselves by his side that tells her to push on. No one is here. Now is the time. He is no longer the judge but a defendant with his jugular exposed and waiting for her to rip away any chance of a favorable verdict.

"The last mission went well," she says and she can tell by the squint of his eyes that he's regretting allowing her to speak first, "You read the report, I trust? From what Paladin Danse tells me, I hear you've got plenty. Wish my job was so clean." She finishes him off with a smile and a sugared utterance of "Elder."

When her blows have landed, she expects him to charge forward, a raging bull, but he does no such thing and it throws her, makes her shield falter just a second and then it's too late. Because he prowls, one step at a time, a wolf now, and all of a sudden she is struck, open-palmed, by the memory of her husband. Push Nate just far enough and suddenly calm waters were so much more dangerous than any riptide.

It's too much and Talbot can't stop the quiver of anticipation in her chest. All-American Nate always finished the worst arguments with angry kisses and wall fucking and Holy Father, Maxson's eyes are blue and his frame tall and his body broad and hard and he walks like Nate does - _did_.

Talbot flings herself from his path with a shuddering breath. Her back hits the workbench and suddenly that formerly reassuring brace is a prison with iron bars that she can't escape.

There is no respite from him because he is standing at her back within seconds and she feels the heat of him between her shoulder blades. Her hands fall against the workbench's cool top as her eyes slide closed. She can almost believe it's those awful teal counters from her and Nate's first apartment beneath her fingers and he's come to spy over her shoulder at whatever abomination of a culinary disaster she's thrown together in the thirty minute span of her returning from class and his arrival home from work at the recruitment office. If she just presses back against him in silent defeat, bested by Salisbury steak, he'll brush aside her hair and kiss her neck and suggest oh-so-sweetly that Chinese or hamburgers from the corner diner will be just fine.

If it's Maxson's hand or Nate's that whispers past her elbow, Talbot can't tell anymore. But he's standing too close and yet not close enough because she can't crawl into him and hold him and tell him that she needs him to come back.

"This is decent work."

Maxson. It's Maxson. Elder Maxson. Maxson with the fucking blue eyes and fuck him. _Fuck_ him. She hates him. She hates his goddamn broad shoulders and how he holds them back a little too straight, hates how he walks and talks and sweet Lord but if she screws her eyes shut just a little tighter –

"It's a work in progress," the words tumble out of her mouth like vomit and taste just as sour because she doesn't want to speak to him anymore.

He grunts and if he can tell the sound makes her insides go to water and her thighs tremble, she doesn't know and he couldn't kill her slow enough to make her admit it.

Damn him.

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* * *

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It is when Paladin Danse shoves roughly past him without a word of apology that Maxson knows something is wrong. The Paladin isn't due back until 0700 the next day and when his superior inquires after him, the armor-clad soldier acts as though he hasn't heard a word. And so Maxson follows him and they make it as far as the main deck before he knows where they're headed. The medbay door is shut tight and inside Cade is snapping orders at all available underlings.

"Paladin?" Maxson has stopped just behind Danse when, finally, the larger man turns and reveals everything. His stoic face is haggard and Maxson thinks the man looks like he's been three rounds with a Deathclaw. "What's happened?"

"Knight Talbot, Elder. She took a shot gun blast from a mutant –"

"Where?"

"Her right side, sir. From about forty meters out. I – I couldn't patch her up well enough in the field and had to call for an extraction."

Maxson is struck more by the Paladin's uncharacteristic nerves than he is from any panic or concern that is slowly slithering up from his belly and into his throat. Danse looks like he might be sick and then Maxson remembers the man's reputation among members of his squad. But the younger man is not unkind and he places a hand on the metal-plated shoulder across from him.

"Let the Knight-Captain do his job, Paladin. You've done all you can. Get some rest."

For a breath or two, Danse looks like he might argue but when he meets Maxson's eyes and sees the command in them, he turns and ambles tiredly away. The Elder is almost ready to do the same, sparing a single, long glance at the medbay door and readying himself to turn, when a broken wail erupts from within that causes his heart to stutter in his chest. It is a cry from someone unused to the physicality of war wounds and the ragged shriek is a far cry from the cutting voice he has grown accustomed to sparring with, the one that chooses every syllable with care. There in the hallway, he is taken back to the night before in the armory when he had very nearly stood chest-to-back with her and that same voice had missed a beat then, too. That had been before she had turned and looked up at him with such intensity that he had dropped the chestpiece he'd been admiring out of reflex and stepped back from her.

"Goodnight, Elder Maxson," she had told him before she'd stepped around him, taking obvious care not to so much as brush the tails of his coat.

Now, Maxson reminds himself that soldiers get hurt. It's inevitable. He has seen as much time and time again. But that does not stop him from throwing out a hand to brace himself against the bulkhead when a second scream rips the air.

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	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

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It is nearly two months before she returns to the Prydwen and when she does, she reeks of ghoul and chems. Maxson cannot even bring himself to address her as she drags past the entrance of the observation deck. Neither does she make an effort to look his way. She just shoulders her rucksack higher and winces at the strain the movement puts on her still tender side.

He could kill her.

She had all but abandoned her post after Knight-Captain Cade's treatment and that was room enough for an exile, or at least a demotion, in the Elder's book. Wounded and recovering or not, she is every bit as bound by duty to the Brotherhood as any other soldier on the Prydwen. The very idea has him stewing for the entire day and by mealtime, Maxson is ready to scuttle the entire ship if it would but take her down with it. The nerve of not reporting in is beyond him and it is too much for his ego to contain.

Why, then, he waits until after supper to send for her, he does not know. But he owes no one an explanation and he is still debating an answer when the door of the observation deck hisses open and she is standing there as small and as proud as ever. The set of her jaw dares him to reprimand her but even that cannot save her this evening.

She has changed into her BOS uniform, at least, and out of the jeans and faded leather jacket she had arrived in. Even across the room, the faint trace of chem cocktails burns his nose and chokes his lungs and soon he's charging toward her like she's a wall he has to breach.

She only squares herself against him and when he's looking down his nose at her, he is left to deny the relief he feels at finding her eyes clear and sharp as ever, not chem-addled as he'd expected. Just red-rimmed and weary.

The observation does nothing to soothe his words, however, and he bares down on her with all his might.

"Do you know the penalty for desertion, soldier?"

What else can he do other than threaten? He cannot ask anything. Not when she believes herself above his law. How do you feel? Where have you been? It is all insufficient and Maxson's patience is worn far too thin.

She blinks at him once and that clearness is suddenly clouded over with pain and he wonders if his words have yet to register. He has the answer when she pitches forward unexpectedly, her body limp and loose as it gives out beneath her. Of course, he catches her. His arms can hardly reach around her fast enough as she collapses into him.

"Just wanted to rest, Maxson," she groans and his name is a curse, "Could've waited til in the morning."

He's trying to hold her up even as she is insistent that she will go to the floor. She's solid muscle and compact and damn if she shouldn't be so heavy. But she's burning him. She's against him, all of him, and for the first time she's asking him for help. For a moment, he contemplates dropping her out of contempt but he doesn't know what he'll rupture if he does that, so he kneels alongside her, letting her weight pull him down. She is bracing against him with a too-tight grip that's pulling fleece out of his jacket. Putting his hands atop hers to free himself is a mistake because it means his fingers have to curl over hers for the very first time. Her skin is softer than it should be, even beneath the filth of travel. It makes him squeeze too tightly. She either does not notice or does not care.

"Walked from Goodneighbor," he hears her explain. "Didn't come across any Brotherhood outposts t'hitch a ride. Spent the afternoon with Cade, s'why I didn't report. He didn't release me til after supper."

As her words curb, he feels her sigh against his neck. Her breath is warm and he's just now realizing he might be ticklish beneath his ear when she presses her forehead into the curve of his shoulder. It wouldn't be right to slide the hand that currently rests on hers down the length of her waist. Yet, it's not the impropriety of the action that stills the twitch of his fingers. It's the fact that he can't remember which side she was wounded on and God forbid he makes her injury any worse.

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After Talbot has been deposited back into Cade's care for an overnight observation, Maxson returns straight to his quarters and locks the door behind him. Tonight he doesn't bother to put his heavy coat away in its locker, instead letting it lie in a shapeless heap near the foot of his bed. His boots and the rest of his clothing get the same treatment in short order before he barrels into the shower and flips on the water. The spray is chilly and weak, hardly doing anything more than beading against his skin before sliding off down his back. The Prydwen has never had the best water pressure but then again, he has never been anywhere that has demonstrated any better.

He is not proud of the way his body sags against the wall, allowing his back to press flush with the cold surface instead of supporting his own weight like he does every other minute of every day. He means to wash it all away – the whole day and everything about it, the smell of Talbot and any residue that is left on him where she has branded.

It is his imagination that gives him the idea that the patter of water against his chest feels like a tongue lapping, gliding lower until it falls away and starts anew. The images in his head are of a knight who's whole and healthy and not bound to a sickbed but on her knees in front of him, challenging him to own her, dominate her, to snatch her by her hair and then smiling when he gives her unspoken orders to _suck_.

It would be a lie to say he doesn't indulge from time to time, but it's always with a faceless image, nameless and shameless, one that disappears when he's done, one whose eyes he never has to meet the next morning. Faced now with a new desire, Maxson does not hesitate. Past caring. The heat at the base of his spine won't allow it and he palms himself roughly as his legs splay just wide enough to hold his weight.

In his mind, he sees her and those damn lips need a new purpose outside of second-guessing him. His hand slides once and twice and then he closes his fingers around his swollen cock and pumps in earnest. The harder the water falls, the faster his hand works and he swears that the wet slip-slide of his palm can almost pass for Talbot's mouth. The thought parts his lips like he's some kind of hormonal teen, making him grit his teeth and grunt. If he could, he knows he would fuck every part of her but first, first her mouth, that damn mouth, taking him so far she chokes and her lips press against his base while his fist tightens in her hair and holds her there as he bucks against her.

The tightness in his balls grows and his need for hard and fast lessens until it's just his index finger and thumb rolling over his tip – her questioning tongue lapping with each jerk of his wrist. Her eyes narrow and she looks up at him and in her gaze is a command he is all too happy to follow for once.

Mere minutes after it begins, the fantasy is over and Maxson's fist clenches and the free hand that has been thrown against the shower door flies down to cup his balls as the other works harder against his cockhead and he's falling, tumbling with a curse and a groan as his muscles lock down and spasm and fuck the world, if he doesn't want her to want to take every drop that is spilling from him now and swallow. He wants to jerk her up and kiss her, to taste what he's poured into her and clean away what's left until he's hard again and can fuck her properly.

But it's the drumming of cold water against him, not Talbot's hands and body, that stirs him and he can bear the chill just long enough to rinse away what is left of his weakness before he collapses naked into his empty rack, gone from the day before any guilt can find him.

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	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five_

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Paladin Danse pushes training exercises every day for a week after her return. In the field and out, and Talbot spends most of the time wondering why the hell she came back anyway. That's when she looks at Danse, or at what she can see of him poking out from that case of armor, and knows that she simply doesn't want to let the man down. They've lost their camaraderie since she split the scene two months earlier, having escaped from Cade's medbay before Danse awoke one morning. She feels the loss in her chest every time he won't meet her eyes. Pretends not to notice and talks too much to fill the silence. The disappointment in his gaze lasts a day too many for her liking; it scalds her - fillets her down to the bone and leaves her wounds open to air. There are few people in this damnable place who warrant any allegiance from Talbot but Danse is one of them, whether he knows it or not.

She aims to remind him.

So, she pushes herself and her body until Hancock's chems are out of her system and she can move without wanting to fall over.

For a little while, whatever is looking out for her grants her peace. Let's her avoid contact with the Brotherhood's leader. She's been allowed temporary leave so long as her paladin babysits her and even that news had been delivered by word of mouth down the chain of command. Naturally, the lull comes to an end quickly and soon the memories hit her hard and fast and she's not braced for them. They drive her to her knees when they come. This time they change the game. Snap a hypermnesic cord that she doesn't have the desire or the know-how to weld back together.

It happens when she and Lancer Captain Kells garner an audience during her first briefing at the end of her recovery. Even after so long, she has not forgotten how _his_ steps sound. Or, rather how her husband's sounded. Boots. Boots on all the time. Never barefoot. His gait long and paced, soles off the ground for a heartbeat too long. Never rushed, steady, steady until he's on her, sweeping her up and carrying her around the house for the sake of hearing her laugh. Kells must not see the shiver that runs through her as her past collides violently with her present. He's distracted by the Elder's appearance.

Talbot's body aches to turn from Kells when she hears those steps come to a halt in her shadow, but her brain overrides her muscles' command and holds her firmly in place. It's not Nate. Not the narrow hallway of their home in Sanctuary Hills. It's Maxson. The claustrophobia-inducing Prydwen.

The newcomer with no right to sneak up behind her greets her superior first. "Captain."

Kells inclines his head and Talbot thinks it looks enough like blind, shit-faced reverence to make her lose all respect for the Lancer Captain but she says nothing. Doesn't take her eyes off the older man. Won't. Not for anything.

Kells looks at her again and reiterates orders she's only half-listened to - something about escorting some child through a damn war zone near Diamond City - before he dismisses her. All that is left for her to do is exit up the stairs. Thank God. She _needs_ to find Danse, so calm and comfortable. Wishes she could click her heels and appear at the paladin's side without having to turn and ignore blue eyes as they stalk and taunt her retreat.

But those eyes do no such thing. For once that gaze doesn't track her when she passes by, even as she makes an accidental show of her arm grating against the bulkhead so she doesn't risk touching _him_.

For Kells' benefit alone, she bites off a cheerful, poisonous acknowledgement to their commandant that goes unrecognized. Moments later she's gone and Maxson's speaking to the captain. She's free. But the world has slowed down and she can't figure out how to bring it back to normal speed. The culprit is a wave of rejection that slides down her throat and throbs in her ears as the once black and white squares of the chessboard slip out from under her.

Once upon a time, she couldn't walk across the room without Nate watching her. Bewitched or quirky or in love or all things at once. Something. Whatever. It became a comfort to her and a matter of pride. Talbot feels empty now for the first time in a long time because Maxson is _supposed_ to remind her and today he hasn't and if he doesn't, Nate is slipping a little further away.

Such a thing can't be tolerated. She still needs him because he's not gone, damn it. Not yet.

It's foolish, she's aware, and she's delusional and maybe a little bit sick. Somewhere inside, reason swells and kicks at illogical emotion. She's better than this. Distance. She needs distance. Or a cold bucket of radiated water dumped over her head. Not happening, though. Danse will do instead. Distance. Difference. Danse? Yes, Danse is different.

Good.

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* * *

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Maxson isn't looking for her when he finds her. It's after hours and the Prydwen is quiet save for the hum of engines. The moment he rounds the corner and sees her, he knows it is definitely Talbot standing just ahead of him at the railing, because her hair isn't regulation. It's loose and blowing wildly in the wind, whipping around her shoulders as she stands at the bow of the flight deck. Any other soldier under his command has enough respect for their positions to keep their bearings in all things at all times. But it's dark as pitch outside and if Maxson was to give her the benefit of the doubt, he might assume she was hoping no one would catch her this late. He knows better. Truth is she does it because she wants to and the only way anyone could stop her would be grab a pair of shears and start cutting.

Or maybe Paladin Danse could stop her. Maxson has noticed the man is the only one who can keep any kind of leash on the knight. But he certainly isn't going to pull Danse aside and request he keep his charge's hair under better control just because it annoys Maxson and makes him want to reach out and wrap his fist in it. For now, though, he stays back far enough so that she does not notice him. She can't hear him over the rumble of the Prydwen's engines and at first he means to use the anonymity to think of the best way to challenge her. But her hair is still catching in the wind, drawing his eyes to her like a snare around his ankle.

It's a trap that pulls him closer until he is finally at her side. When she turns her face to him, the peace that she has been enjoying shatters and he doesn't know if he should take such a thing as a victory or a slight. Rarely does he surprise her. Nine times out of ten, when she looks at him it's as if she's been expecting him and he's running late to a meeting he didn't know he was expected to attend. Tonight, however, she can't hide the surprise on her face fast enough for him to miss it.

"Maxson –" a strand of hair catches in her mouth to cut her off. The time she spends shoving it out of her face gives him a chance to test her defenses. He wonders what she will do if there's a change in his tactics.

"Talbot." He says and the name is more familiar to his lips than she knows. He's spilled himself to those two syllables more in the last two weeks than he has altogether in the previous season. Sure enough, her eyes narrow and all at once, she's wary of him if the bowing of her chest and chin is any tell at all.

Since she was wounded all thoses weeks ago, Maxson has almost forgotten what it is like to have her looking at him with such ferocity, as if she could devour him whole like a master might an acolyte who has stepped out of line. She might cut him to ribbons if he hadn't steeled himself, pick him apart to discover what would undo his patience today and then spring on him in that politely insubordinate way of hers. As though she simply doesn't know any better. Maxson has decided that is precisely the reason she gets away with as much as she does from the rest of the crew.

Not this night, he thinks.

"I read Paladin Danse's report on your work with the squire," he pauses to give her time to absorb what he's said and almost instantaneously he can see the wheels turning in her mind as she works at light speed to analyze all possible outcomes of where he might be leading.

All she offers after a moment is a noncommittal, "Good kid."

Maxson tilts his head and one corner of his mouth twinges uncomfortably, as if he's physically resistant to the act of smiling. He doesn't often deadpan, not in years, and neither he nor Talbot seem to know quite what to do when he quickly says, "Danse or the squire?"

Talbot nearly flinches back from him, going so far as to look around over her shoulder to see if anyone else might be about who could confirm for her that Arthur Maxson did actually almost tell a joke. She has no luck and she's left to sort out the lunacy on her own time.

"I'd think you'd be a closer fit to the kid's profile, Maxson," she eventually replies once the world has righted itself, " _sir_."

Ah, there it is then. That flare of tension as that last word leaves her mouth.

"She almost took a bullet, you know," Talbot goes on, seemingly more comfortable with their usual caustic rapport and quick to shut down his momentary lapse from normality, "Would have if Danse hadn't yanked her out of the way."

He tilts his head and a strand of dark hair that has been loosened by the wind falls into his eyes, but to move it away would be to give her a chance at escape. He lets it hang and doesn't know why it makes her swallow so hard when she sees it.

"Then perhaps it's Danse I should be commending," he says.

Her mouth snaps shut with a clack of teeth he can hear even above the mechanical groaning.

"Yes," she bites back and then she smiles and it's all pearlescent teeth that gleam in the moonlight. "Fine soldier, Danse. Good man. _Years_ of experience saving lives and killing things. Less good at paperwork, but hey, that's the trade off, am I right?"

Maxson can't stop the prickling of his skin as the little barb stabs him. It lights under him like a match dropped into kerosene.

Talbot cocks her head and makes a show of kicking him when he is down and damn her. Damn her and how quick she is.

Ever unmerciful, she proceeds to wonder aloud, "How long has he been at this?"

It's a question she knows he can't answer because anything he tells her will outweigh what he can say about his own experience. This was a mistake, Maxson decides. If she says anything else, he might just clamp his hand over her mouth to shut her up because he doesn't want to hear it. Any of it.

"Knight," her rank is a warning that she has never heeded before and by now he knows he should have figured the fuck out that using it is like sending up a flare of surrender. And Talbot doesn't take prisoners.

But tonight, her last charge is different than anything she's done prior. Maybe it's retaliation for his jab earlier. Maybe she is simply sadistic. She shuts her mouth and then she closes the small space between their bodies. The next thing his mind can register is that her small, feminine form is up against him, chest to chest, and she's peering up at him with a look so cruel he actually draws back just to regain his mental footing lest he make the kill easier. She's searching his face, every line that isn't there after only twenty short years, every scar and hair.

The jolt of her fingertips against his jaw is enough to shake him and his hand flies to her wrist, closing around it like a vice. She's meant to pull away. She would if the world made sense. But she doesn't and he can feel her heartbeat thrumming against his palm. It's running away beneath her skin and he can't turn her loose.

One delicate finger remains free from his hold and he feels the pad of it run up the line of his face to his ear. Faint and light and he knows he'll still feel it when he lays down tonight. The flesh there rises to her touch and he doesn't want it to because she'll see and it'll be one more battle lost.

"Trim the beard," she whispers as that intrusive digit finally pulls away, "Do it for me, won't you?"

 _What_ ? If Maxson scowls any harder his eyes will be closed.

"For you?"

No. _Negative_. That's not what he meant to say. But it's too late and the words are out. His voice is ragged and stuck in his throat, so he tries glaring at her instead but the effect is lost, earning his inquiry no reply.

Whatever spell she's under appears to end. Talbot takes a step back and his hand follows her, still wrapped around her wrist. One moment more and he releases her as if she a grenade that's about to blow, before turning sharply on his heel and leaving her where he found her.

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* * *

 _As always, thank you for reading. Hope you've all been enjoying it._


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six_

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Maxson has been confined to the observation deck for the better part of the day. The ship is buzzing around him, energy arching and popping from the whispers of those who pass in the hallway. All for a glorified scavenger hunt. Nearly a half-dozen teams in the field, tracking down the necessary elements of a well-known secret. _She's_ out there, too, due back this very evening. A week it's been since they last spoke – the morning after she had ambushed him so viciously on the flight deck. He had added orders to those Kells had given her. Half for the sake of watching that angry tic of hers as she smiled her tepid acquiescence, and half because he almost trusted her to get the job done. Or maybe he wanted to trust her. He did trust Danse at the very least, and Maxson was more than certain that the paladin would toss her over his shoulder and carry her back himself if she tried to disappear again.

Even now, Maxson's fingertips are tingling in anticipation he refuses to acknowledge and only by curving them around the collar of his jacket does he stop them from twitching. He has no choice but to hide it, because a scribe has come in with a bundle full of reports held in his arms. Maxson waves him over to a table nearby, as he has done at least three times over today. A loud, grateful sigh is breathed as the heavy load rattles the table legs and Maxson resists the urge to roll his eyes. Below him on the flight deck, a vertibird is hovering near its bay and, though it's too early still, he squints to try and make out which team is returning. Or at least he tries to until the prickling of hairs at the back of his neck alerts him that he is not yet alone. Unlike the previous encounters today, there is hesitation before the scribe departs – Maxson might find if admirable if he weren't so damned annoyed by it.

"Is there a problem, scribe?"

The young man jerks back as if he's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His eyes, which have previously been lingering upon Maxson's face, squinting and trying hard to discover an untold secret, suddenly flick to the floor.

"N-no, sir!"

Maxson scowls and the look alone has the other man backing toward the door. "Then that will be all."

"Yes, sir!"

The man snaps to attention and departs in one hurried motion, burned out by the Elder's glare. When he is gone, Maxson catches himself raising a hand to the beard at his chin, recently trimmed. He can't remember the last time he's cropped it so short. Regret snatches his gut in that moment and twists and just briefly enough to sting, he loathes himself for ever picking up that razor. The same razor that is currently lying at the bottom of the bin in his room, tossed aside like a junkie's needle, used and leaving him unable to take back what he had done.

When the reports have been read in their entirety, evening has fallen over the Commonwealth and with the darkness, the Prydwen goes quiet. The bustle of the day is done and the mess hall emptier than usual from the current deployments. Every present face is familiar to Maxson as he makes his pass, all of them looking up from their trays to greet him with a warm quietness that he returns as best he can. Not among the diners tonight is Talbot, and neither is Danse, for that matter. It is another minor point on a long list of annoyances, but one that can be easily rectified.

He finds the pair in the armory, their heads bent over a rifle as they squabble about some modification Danse seems positive will wreak havoc on the weapon's recoil. Neither takes notice as Maxson pauses in the doorway. He is curious, admittedly, and this domestic dispute of theirs has Talbot more animated than he's ever seen her.

"Back off, big fella'," says the woman as she shoves a finger at the paladin. "It's my rifle."

"I gave it to you, sol-"

"Don't you 'soldier' me, Danse." There it is. That familiar, biting tone – the one that is part jest and part warning. The same one she normally reserves for Maxson. She snatches the rifle to her chest protectively and swings away.

" _Mine_ ," she snarls and leaves Danse at a loss.

For a moment, Maxson almost feels a kind of sympathy for man. Until Talbot turns, her eyes still cast toward the man who's her reason for being here, and she's _smiling_. A smile that has no sheen of predatory teeth and devouring lips. Just radiance, raw and dazzling – happy, Maxson thinks, maybe even delighted. It's too bright, like looking at the sun, and it leaves him seeing spots, half-blind and light-headed. He's never imagined her smiling before. Just the same narrow-eyed look, perpetually contrary and oddly cold; a façade that is only ever a constant and daunting bulwark to be surpassed.

And this smile - it isn't for him.

The paladin – her paladin, the one she has so obviously gotten the better of – just shakes his head with disapproval that is no more genuine than Talbot's momentary display of hostility.

It leaves a bad taste in Maxson's mouth.

Before he can speak up, another voice is calling out over Talbot's muted sniggering. Accented and, on a bad day, as cutting as Talbot's own, Proctor Quinlan's words lash out from the direction of the armory's stores. Something about taking too long with technical documents, followed by a threatening _hand-them-over-now-if-you-please_. Suddenly, Talbot's trying to explain her way out of a corner with Danse hovering unhelpfully at her back.

She has not yet even noticed him, seemingly unaware that he is watching every move she makes, like a sniper lining up a shot. _Later_ , Maxson scowls. His business with the woman will have to wait until _later_. It's just as well, he supposes, because he is going to need time to forget her smile.

By 2200 hours, the Prydwen's Elder has seen neither hide nor hair of Eulalia Talbot and his mood is all the more sour for it. He has since abandoned the more occupied regions of the ship for his own quarters. There is solitude to be found between his four walls, if not peace exactly. Only the beeping of the terminal atop his desk keeps him company and tonight, at the very least, Maxson is grateful for it. No day when Talbot has been aboard his ship has gone according plan. She reaches out with invisible fingers and disrupts _everything_ , making ripples and sometimes waves.

He smashes one key particularly violently at the thought and the computer chirps angrily back at him. The knock that follows is unexpected and as he runs a hand down his face, he wonders if perhaps he has imagined it. A second rap comes and then a third – heavy-handed and impatient.

Unexpected.

She's looking up at him when he swings open the door and there's a clap of paper against his chest before he can speak.

"Proctor Ingram's report." Her words are followed by a smile that doesn't fool him, not now that he's seen the real thing. "I almost forgot. Would've given it to you earlier in the armory if you'd asked nicely."

Damn her. _Fuck_ her.

He wants to wrap his hands around her throat and start squeezing, if only for long enough to wipe that smirk off her face. She's not hiding this one particularly well. Too proud of herself. His heart pounds in his ears at the observation, blood racing with this same challenge he has yet to best.

A few too many seconds go by in silence and if he hadn't been looking dead at her, he might have missed her awkward shift from foot to foot. It's a tic that he has noticed she has trouble controlling. Something that doesn't stim from pride but…nerves? A weak point, if he can ever pin it down.

Maxson grits his teeth and snatches the papers from where she has them trapped against his heart. It's a folder. Notably, only one.

"And _your_ report?" he asks.

"That is my report. Or, I suppose, it's a report about me. I'm told it's positively glowing."

Another stroppy shift, as if she's not sure if she wants to stay and torment him any longer or turn and run for cover. Maxson would almost prefer the latter. At least that way she would leave him in peace. Right now, she's staring up at him like it's he who has disturbed her in the middle of night. Waiting for him to either join in their game or dismiss her. But Maxson is nothing if not a tactician and she has wandered into enemy territory and the only semblance of a white flag he sees is the dingy, oversized crew-neck she's wearing. The one that hangs too loose from the shoulders and dips beneath her arms so that it pulls teasingly across her breasts.

Opening his door wider, Maxson steps to the side. "I need to speak to you, Knight."

At his request, her face pulls into a frown and by God, if she does that peculiar dance of hers once more, Maxson might just drag her inside himself.

"We are speaking, _Elder_ ," she says the words but there's something else there. A challenge – veiled and coded like a message from wars long past. _Do it_ , the dare is plain enough, _go on, if you're man enough_.

Her jaw is set and tilted upward and if he but reaches out and catches her beneath her chin, she would have no choice –

But Talbot's already gliding past him and it's all at once foreign to see her here. In his room. He's imagined her time and time again, against the wall or bent forward over the desk, ass out for him as he fucks her. It seems almost a trespass, though if it's against her or his own space, he isn't sure. As if being present in this room might give her a glimpse of the thoughts that had transpired here. Suddenly, it is Maxson who is nervous, caught like a kid with dirty comics under his mattress.

He resists the urge to clear his throat – it's too obvious, a dead giveaway that she will pounce on – so he steels himself and breathes in once and there's a foreign whiff of…something. Scented soap. Expensive and almost impossible to find. He wants to ask what it is and where she found it. On the Prydwen, they're lucky if they get a shipment of oily lye cakes, the kind that burn away filth instead of cleaning it. The scent isn't so much a novelty as it is utterly foreign. He's never noticed it before and suspicion begins its slow creep up his spine as he circles around her to drop Ingram's report on his desk.

"Something the matter, Elder Maxson?"

It's the second time she's called him by his title since she showed up at his door and the obduracy of her need to challenge him on all fronts sets his teeth on edge. He won't be baited. Being baited will end up with her keening his name into the mattress.

Still, he has to say something. Anything before she does. Hands behind his back, in _his_ room, irrefutably _his_ dominion, Maxson asks, "How goes the work with Proctor Ingram?"

There is an arch of a single eyebrow. "You've got the report."

"I'm asking _you_ , knight."

"Just fine. All electrical knick-knacks and technological thingy-ma-jigs present and accounted for as of 1100 this morning." She grins at him and rolls her shoulders. "Danse and I do good work. Anything more than that, you'll have to read the report."

Behind his back, his hands tighten around one another as his tone warns her to drop the disobedience. But tonight, she's fearless in the face of him and what has steeled her, he wishes he knew.

"Knight –"

"Sit down," she says suddenly, and the next thing he registers is that she's stepping up to meet him.

Maxson's rarely shocked. He prides himself on expecting the unexpected. This, however, is past what their usual dance entails. She's not asking; hers is a blatant command. It's a war of attrition suddenly becoming a nuclear Armageddon.

"Excuse me?"

He means it. He's not sure he heard her correctly. But there's a small hand on his chest coaxing him back toward his desk chair and for once, Maxson is actually too taken aback to put up a fight. Too struck that he stands back and watches the bombs fall as if instead they're shooting stars.

"You've done it wrong," Talbot explains unhelpfully, "Now, where's your razor?" She looks around his quarters, her head turning this way and that.

"Knight –"

"Men keep their razors like ladies keep their lipsticks…or they used to, anyway." She turns back to him and there's a pleading in her eyes, almost a sadness, and Maxson doesn't know what to fucking do with it. "Where is it, Maxson?"

This has gone too far.

"No," he shakes his head and in an instant, he has leapt up from the chair. " _No_."

" _Yes_ , you've clearly already gone and done what I asked you to, half-assed though it may be, so –"

"That's _enough_!" He all but snarls at her, on her suddenly, bearing down on her with every ounce and inch he has over her and every year he fucking doesn't. She flinches and is facing him in an instant, her seemingly frantic search halted. There's a flash of something – a grin, maybe, or at least a twitch at the corner of her mouth that reveals she's not afraid. She looks like a hustler whose set him up for something and he's already been robbed but he doesn't know how.

"There he is."

The words are spoken so softly Maxson almost doesn't hear them. It's a breath, a relieved sigh between parted lips, and whatever hand has been played is already being shuffled back into the deck.

"Sit down," she's standing too close and all he smells is that damnable soap and _her_. " _Please_."

The last word is a purr, laced with a femininity that is all but gone from the world these days. Maxson's never seen anything like it. His body betrays him. He sits. Slowly sinking down, relinquishing his power solely for the sake of seeing where this goes. He hopes she understands what he's doing. He thinks she does. Because she smiles and if he doesn't stare too closely, he can almost pretend she's not a cat and he's not a yellow canary.

"Where's the razor, Maxson?"

"I threw it away," he grunts and there's a different kind of regret welling up in him now. Shaking her head, Talbot looks for the nearest trash can. Not much else has been thrown inside, just a few papers and a ruined washcloth or two. She pilfers about as daintily as she can until she has the straight razor between her fingers. The silver of it catches in the dim light and if it was anybody else, Maxson would have reached for his gun by now.

She retreats to the sink, where she washes the blade and withdraws from the medicine cabinet the sudsy, scentless soap that passes for his shaving cream. He watches as she lathers her hands, small fingers gliding silkily over one another, gentle, teasing almost, and she's doing it on purpose, he's sure of it. Between his legs, blood is rushing and he wonders what will happen is he shifts just slightly. If that military rigidity is forgone for just a few minutes to give him room to breathe. She'll see, and Maxson isn't positive that he would be ashamed at the prospect. He continues to watch her as one hand circles her wrist and strokes down to a fingertip. Light as feathers, far softer than his own. His cock twitches to life and if this is the game, he's willing to take her bet. Leaning back just far enough to get comfortable, he splays and stretches out his legs. Waiting. Watching.

Talbot returns to him when her hands are covered in suds, a rag tossed over her shoulder, and the razor gleaming between two fingers. "I hope you trust me," she croons and Maxson prays that she doesn't see him swallow.

Her hands are as warm as he remembers as she runs her palms against his jaw. Her fingers sweep in practiced motions from his chin to his ear and halfway down his neck, coating skin and hair alike in a layer of foam. He won't hum his appreciation at the feeling. He's not so weak. Not yet. Not even for her. Not even as her thumbs rest too long just below his ear and circle there softly, massaging with just enough pressure that Maxson can concede to letting his eyes flutter closed. She's done this before. He doesn't want to know how often or to whom.

Too soon, the heat of her is gone from his side and the trance is broken. His eyes snap open, aware once again and on edge until he hears the facet turn on and the weak trickle of water as she washes her hands. A minute later she returns to him and her knee bumps one of his. He understands. Spread his legs wider. _Let me in_ , she asks wordlessly and Maxson knows he's committed now. He splays his knees just wide enough for her stand between. She slips in like a puzzle piece. So close that her lower body and stomach are leaning against his chest, bracing her weight there, insolent to the last and unashamed that it leaves him eyelevel with her breasts.

One finger beneath his chin lifts his head and the first chill of the blade nearly makes him flinch.

She is playing her game. He will play his. His gaze is not soft as he watches her from beneath his lashes but his hand is as he raises it to rest atop her hip. Fingers close together at first, un-invasive, as if he means to steady her. She does not brush him away. No, she's not so kind. She smiles softly and for a moment, her eyes fall closed and the razor stops its trail upwards toward his jaw. A single breath later and she's resumed her task.

She's remarkably gentle, showing him a kindness he has not shown her in his late-night thoughts. For all her cutting remarks, her hands are those of a lover, practiced and sure. She keeps his beard cut close to his jaw, rather than leaving it straggling down his neck. He has already cropped it short for her and if the continuous running of her free hand's thumb along his cheek is any tell at all, then she is pleased. Somewhere, in the lull of silence, Maxson has decided to let her do what she will. His price for this is to place his other hand on the hip he has not yet claimed. She is trapped. His for the time being.

She still does not argue.

For the final time, she swipes the blade against the cloth at her shoulder, humming to herself, pleased with her work. She folds the towel neatly, tucking away any residue, and then slides it against his face until any remaining lather is gone.

"You can wake up now," she whispers to him and if he were not in such a good mood, he might glare at her cheekiness. "Don't look so worried," she winks, "It's much better."

She still has not moved, Maxson notes, but she does toss the rag and accompanying razor atop the desk beside them. Standing as she is, her body braced so near to his, she can't see how hard he is, how his cock strains at the seam of his pants.

Her hands come to rest atop his, as if she has read his mind and seen the internal debate he's facing as to whether or not to release her. It wouldn't take much to upright her, to pull her down into his lap. Her tits have been in his face for the last half-hour and he wants to see them, to feel their softness beneath his teeth and mouth. What would she do, Maxson wonders, if he was to pull her down and rip away the shirt and _mark_ her. Pay her for services rendered. This new beard is her doing, after all, and Maxson wants to hear her cry out as the coarse hair she has so diligently tamed drags along the insides of her thighs. The thought makes his fingers tighten and Talbot hisses a breath and closes her eyes, her fingers clamping down over his to still him. Or maybe they're pushing him harder into her. He can't tell.

Just once he squeezes the flesh between his hands and in response, her hips push flush against him. He holds still. Let's her grind. Can smell the _wet_ of her and regulations be damned, if she lets him, he'll wreck her for tonight and every other night until they've had their fill.

Something has to be said. Something to throw up a flag between the warnings going off in his head about making fantasies reality with soldiers under his command and the throbbing, most primal of needs to just _have_ her.

His voice is hoarse, hardly more than a rasp. "Should I thank you?"

It's a misstep. A miscalculation, he realizes a second too late.

At his words, her eyes spring open and her head snaps down to peer at him, wide-eyed and…lost. Like he's woken her up suddenly from a daydream. The sudden change shocks him and it's he who releases her first, pulling his hands away and leaving her to flounder on weak knees without support.

She catches herself and steps back. It's second nature for her to grin and sure enough, that half-hearted laugh splits her mouth and she shrugs off whatever has just transpired between them with a toss of her shoulders.

"It's late, isn't it?" She makes a show of searching for a clock as she retreats. And it _is_ a retreat – he's won and all it's got him is a hard on and a room that's about to be empty. She's all but stumbling over herself to reach the door. Maxson can't even follow her. Not now.

Her hand closes over the door handle and she winks _toward_ him, not at him, but in his direction. "That beard needs to be trimmed every week," she chirps and suddenly she's choking on her words, "Or at least it does – _did_ for…well, someone. Some…people. You know?"

"Talbot," Maxson stands. Can't hardly get out of the chair fast enough. Tonight, however, her name doesn't stall her.

"Goodnight, Maxson."

She slips out the door when he's all but two steps from her and he doesn't call her back. It's a decision he only regrets when he's locked the door behind him and throws out an arm to brace himself, letting his forehead rest against it and taking what comfort he can in the fact that no one was in the hall to witness her as she fled. His erection is still heavy between his legs, and for the first night there is a _need_ burning there rather than just a want for flesh or the desire to dominate what refuses to be cowed. It presses at the base of his spine and up into his chest, red-hot and suffocating, until his fingers begin to twitch involuntarily with the desire to answer his body's urges.

Gritting his teeth, Maxson takes a breath and it's cold in his lungs. Not tonight. Something feels wrong about it tonight, when he was a hair's breadth from the real thing, when a different action or word would have had the two of them tangled together against the wall this very moment. She might be sighing his name in his ear, begging him for all he could give her, until he was hilt deep inside her cunt and couldn't go any further. Until she smiled, that real _smile_ , for him, and he answered any command she gave him for as long as she let him have her.

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	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter Seven_

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She dreams of warmth, of comfort, of home.

She dreams of Nate.

Flat of her back, bare to the world and him, she can feel his solid weight atop her, pinning her down, anchoring her to the past. His head, blond and bowed with his scarred cheek against her belly, is turned away from her as he rests. Those hands, the ones that she'll never forget, stroke her sides, counting her ribs idly, and it is strange to think that these same hands have pulled the trigger on people's lives. They are hands that have waged war. Hands that have made love. And they're on her now and she wants to weep, to turn her face to God and plead that they never leave.

His hair, cropped close at the sides and long on top, slicked back and dark with gel she hates the smell of, tickles her flesh and she wiggles as one particularly troublesome lock slips over her belly button. He's stirring now.

"Nate?" Her voice cracks because she's afraid. Doesn't know why, but there's a dread welling up in the corners of their bedroom like a shadow.

When he looks at her, he's beautiful. Blue eyes, sleepy and sated, meet her own as his white, chipped-tooth smile peeks out from beneath his trimmed, fair-shaded beard.

She knows what's coming. Her heart might burst out of her chest before she hears it.

"Lale?"

His chin, which has been turned to prop atop her stomach, is forced to move as she quivers. Her name. A name she hasn't heard in two centuries. A name no one knows but him. A secret between them and dreams.

It is only a moment later that he, not so sleepy as to be immune to desire for her, is dragging himself up over her. His large body covers her and she's safe; she's so _safe_. Safe as houses. There is no pretense to their rutting; no warning as he slips between her parted thighs and presses into to her and she keens for him. Always for him. Her knees lock his hips to hers. She needs him close, close enough so that she can grab hold and keep him there. Hold him tight enough so that not even the morning can snatch him away.

He fucks her like he never left, like he's a part of her. An extension of her. Slow and deep, pumping into her like a heartbeat. He tastes like she remembers - salty skin and bitter aftershave. Her lips drag over the rough patch of flesh that mars his shoulder front to back. A bullet hole.

"Mine," she whispers and he groans roughly in her ear, a sound that makes her thighs tremble and clench, "Mine."

Hers.

Lips are on hers before she can take her next breath, eating her alive, open-mouthed and unslakable. It makes her dizzy. Dizzier as she's hoisted up and her legs wrap around his muscled waist, heels pressing into his back. He drives her against the headboard, the one that clacks against the wall and strips the paint, marking them into the house itself. A footprint.

Another growl in her ear and suddenly the languid pace becomes sharp and desperate and Talbot begs him, needs him. She needs to watch him shatter and _remember_. Without mercy, as desperate with her hand as he is with his thrusts, she forces his mouth to hers and kisses him with open eyes.

Below her, there is the tell-all grunt of a man on the edge and then he roars, cock weeping as it spasms and she screams because the heat of him burns her to her core.

And it's over.

A lover's embrace, with fingers caressing broken skin and score marks. Kisses to tease her flushed neck.

"Love you," she gasps and there's still an echo of truth in those dream-hazy words.

The voice that answers is gravel, biting and unexpected.

"No, you don't," teeth pinch at her shoulder, "Knight."

It is still blue eyes that stare back at her, but they belong to a younger face and Talbot feels the cut of betrayal down to her gut. She has become the enemy. She clings to the self-loathing, fists it tight, determined not to forgive, even as Maxson flips her to her belly and a new desire descends.

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* * *

.

Something is different when Maxson sees the woman next. He hasn't been in her company for more than five minutes today and he can see it in the way she holds herself. Like a soldier the day after a battle. A battle won, maybe. Maxson knows by now that she will accept no less. But even as he tells her of her new orders, his own stance rigid as he struggles to find his footing after this new turn, she stares him down. That familiar flicker of uncertainty sparks in his belly. He wasn't expecting this and it has shaken him, this detached observation that she now forces upon him.

Like she hadn't been in his quarters just a few nights before.

She makes him feel like less than he is. Like she has a God-given right to expect more from him than he can give her. As if he's not her superior officer. When she looks at him and there's a rush of feeling that he's not quite enough, that something is amiss, and there is some standard he isn't living up to. A fucking bar that's set so high over his head he doesn't even know where it is, never mind having the faintest clue how to reach it.

The instances when she looks at him over the edge of those sunglasses she often wears are the worst, the most infuriating. Just like now, with the slight raise of her brow that is nothing if not patronizing, as if he has made some slight misstep and she's warning him to get back in line, leaving him to play catch up with his pride and his inexplicable want to please her. Around the third time she does it, as he's briefing her and she asks some asinine question about machines and synths and why she needs to do this, he recognizes the look for what it is. A mother scowling a child into submission.

Like her hips didn't still have bruises from where he'd held her.

He does not acknowledge the hitch in his voice as his anger spikes and his ego flares high and hot, like a signal in the night. Fists clenched hard at his side to score the leather of his long bomber jacket, his words falter long enough for him to step into her so that his chest presses against the solid form of her body armor. She's a full head shorter than him, even with her boots on, but she does not flinch from his nearness, from the fact that he towers over her. At her back, Paladin Danse shifts just slightly, a movement that would have gone unnoticed by Maxson if not for the narrowing of the armored man's dark eyes as they flit uncertainly between his superior and the woman who has earned his loyalty.

All she does - all Talbot does, is lift her chin just high enough to magnify her presence three-fold and suddenly Maxson is left to feel as though he's the one who has made the transgression. Not her, the woman with the foolish questions and incessant need to prod at every order he gives.

She will not be bullied and Maxson swallows down the shame he feels at having tried to do so. But he cannot step away from her without it seeming like a retreat. So, he holds his ground and she does the same and they're too close, so close that Danse is visibly uncomfortable. For a moment, Maxson has the idea that the man might place a metallic-gloved hand between them and push them apart before they come to blows.

"Is there a problem, Knight?" Maxson finally grinds out, drawing his back straight to put some meager distance between them.

Her eyes follow the movement and then there's the faintest twitch at one corner of her mouth that causes Maxson to curse internally in outrage.

"There's always a problem, Elder." And that twitch blooms into a man-eating smile.

In that moment, he wants to devour her.

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	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter Eight_

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Talbot has become so used to the low rumble of the Prydwen's engines that sleeping on the silent plains of the Commonwealth is nearly impossible. There is nothing out here to keep the silence at bay. Danse is a quiet sleeper; nearby, cloaked in the glow of starlight, he lays facing her, his chest rising and falling soundlessly as she observes. Somewhere, far off in the distance, a roll of noise spikes and if it's gunfire or thunder, Talbot neither knows nor cares. Any sound to distract her from thoughts of blue eyes and heavy hands on her skin.

When the early hours of morning come around, she crawls over to her companion, both eager for the brief exchange that is coming and sorry that she has to disturb him. Danse's arm is unusually warm beneath her hand. She forgets that he runs hot. Just slightly too warm to the touch. When he is awake, he has a habit of avoiding any actual physical contact with her. But on the off chance she is allowed the opportunity, she takes it. It's like wrapping her hands around a steaming mug of coffee. Pleasantly hot and comforting. He grounds her, ever present at her back.

She shakes him gently and grins down through the darkness at him as he grumbles and cracks an eye to peer up at her through a veil of dark lashes. She has the upper hand; her eyes have long since adjusted to the night and he is only just waking. Yet, he doesn't jerk beneath her fingers, only sighs, as though he already knows it's her by her mere presence alone and doesn't need a visual to confirm it.

He can't know the reassurance she takes in such a small indication of trust.

"Rise and shine, sleepy head," she smiles and the muscle on which she still rests her hand twinges beneath her fingers. He seems reluctant to move.

The paladin mumbles something, words slurred and drowsy, and Talbot's best guess is that he's asked her if there's anything to report.

"Nothing but a shooting star or three."

With a soldier's resignation, Danse sits up and stretches. Somewhere, a joint pops noisily. "Hopefully this is the last night we'll spend on the ground for a while."

"Better than the Prydwen," Talbot lies and Danse can tell it because he looks at her sideways. He wants to say something but doesn't know how. She could ask, tell him to spit it out, but she's afraid she'll spook him, so instead she plops down on top of the sleeping bag he's just vacated. It's still warm and smells like Danse, unaccented and musky.

"Danse," she finally says, letting him know that it's okay, that she won't rebuff him.

Across from her, he doesn't pause as he checks the ammo in his side arm. She knows he's heard her, but he's thinking, formulating his words like a battle plan, so she waits.

When he is ready, he speaks, and his voice is low, almost shy.

"I've...been meaning to ask you something."

Talbot hums and readjusts her head atop her arm so that she can meet his eye. It's not so dark and he's not so far away that she can't see the warmth there, the quiet concern. The anger he'd felt towards her after she'd left has since mostly dissipated, leaving only worry, however unvoiced it may be.

Danse nods his head, the way forward clear. "You've seemed on edge lately. How are you holding up?"

She smiles, a small smile, one from the heart that warms her belly and toes. He's asking if she needs to talk, in his own roundabout way. No one has asked her that since she can remember. People have their own problems.

"Is it that obvious?"

There is a click as a new magazine is snapped into place and she watches as Danse runs his thumb over the grip. More thinking. Too much this time.

Sighing, she sits up. "You worried about me, Danse?"

The soldier isn't interested in looking at her anymore, so he looks out to the wasteland beyond, or at least at what he can see through the black. At last, he speaks.

"All I mean is - you need help, you say the word, soldier." The last word is tacked on, a formality she doesn't know if he'll ever shake.

"You help me every day, Danse. Anymore and you'll have to start charging."

He almost smiles at that. Or as close to smiling as her paladin can get. The brief expression is gone before she can memorize it, take it in, and is replaced by the same serious cast that plagues the man all the day.

"People are talking," he tells her plainly and she knows it's more than gossip because it is Danse who has brought it up. Danse, who is concerned for her.

Talbot frowns through the darkness. She hopes now that he can't see her, that he won't notice as she wriggles uncomfortably atop the ground.

"Apparently," Danse continues after a moment of silence, "Maxson's been asking questions. Looking into your history."

She snorts. "I wish him luck. My records are long gone."

"I know that, soldier. But...it's making people nervous. If Maxson doesn't trust you -"

"Then they shouldn't either." Talbot finishes for him and Danse nods, confirming her line of thought. She's no fool. She has a sneaking suspicion of why Maxson would be asking after her and she's damn sure it's not about loyalty. But grunts take their cues from the top and whatever the Elder's been up to is unsettling to those who don't know any better. She has never believed in burning bridges; she rather likes to build them where she can, and the Brotherhood is one of the most useful she's come across in her travels.

"Thanks for telling me, Danse." She reaches for him and pats that too-warm hand and tries to hide her smile when she sees Danse blink rapid-fire and stare down at the in-the-flesh reminder that they are, all things said, friends.

"I...you're welcome."

For a few minutes the quiet returns and Talbot finally drops back down onto her back, eager now for sleep. But the stillness is heavy, sticking to her like ozone in the air, and it leaves her restless. Danse must hear her tossing; he comes over to her and sits down near where her head lays. He knows the darkest, quietest nights are the worst for her – has heard her cry out and seen her jolt awake, panting and trembling with the vestiges of her dreams. Tonight, he says nothing more, just inches closer to her when he hears her sniffle and lays a gentle hand atop her shoulder until she drifts off. She might have nothing else, she thinks when through the pull of drowsiness she feels that warm hand squeeze lightly, but she has Danse, at least, and that's something.

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	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter Nine_

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Maxson is on the flight deck when the call comes that a signal grenade has been spotted near Medford Memorial Hospital. He knows who is out there. Talbot and Paladin Danse are supposed to be recovering a component to one of Proctor Ingram's toys. It shouldn't alarm him as much as it does; his people go into harm's way each day to cleanse the Commonwealth of its denizens. Even so, it takes all his considerable self-control to keep himself from whirling around to the nearest vertibird pilot and barking at the man to hurry on his way. He checks himself. She can be no different, no more important than any other knight. Especially not in the eyes of the crew. She is capable and Danse even more so. They can hold their own, Maxson is certain.

But he continues to watch with hard, attentive eyes as the crew hurries around him to board a readied vertibird, making sure that not one step falters, that no one lags, until the bird is in the air and help is on its way.

Two hours later, that same bird returns and Maxson remains at the railing, waiting, watching. Danse is the first out, his power armor brutalized and hardly wearable. It sparks at the back, spitting and ready to die with what dignity it can manage. Two more soldiers follow and then the pilot and where is Knight Talbot? Maxson is halfway down the stairs before he realizes that he _has_ to slow down, to calm himself. Eyes are on him; Danse has turned to look at him as well and Maxson can see that the man's lip has been split up to his nose.

"Casualties, Paladin?" Maxson can't phrase the question any other way. Can't name names. Not yet.

Something about the way Danse frowns at him causes Maxson's breath to catch at the back of his teeth. Like the man knows - like he's caught a whiff of something amiss. Something out of the norm. A hound that, were he not so well trained, would be baying after a fox.

But that breath is released when Danse slowly shakes his head. "Negative, Elder."

The rest of the question hangs in the air and neither man addresses it. Very well, if it is to be this way. Maxson grits his teeth and nods shortly. Danse is dismissed. Let him see to his armor and his bloody lip and Maxson will wait, away from prying eyes, where the paladin cannot see or question.

Talbot arrives later; she had reported to Ingram first, Maxson learns. She passes him on the flight deck and there is still blood staining the side of her face. He thinks it looks like war paint, swiped across her nose and patterned with her own fingerprints. Head wounds bleed rather impressively, he reminds himself, and the gash that runs from her temple to her ear can't be so deep. She's more or less fine. Has to be. Her step is sure-footed but exhausted. Her hand grips the railing too tightly. But when she glances past him, Maxson swears she almost looks relieved. A small grin is flashed and he can't return it, not even as he steps back in surprise - all he can do is dip his head once in acknowledgement.

Just like any other soldier.

And then, she is gone. Down into the belly of the Prydwen toward medical. He wishes he could say for certain that she goes to have herself looked at, but something in his gut whispers that she has gone first and foremost in search of her mentor. Maybe, as Maxson's eyes follow her, it's the look on her face that reveals the truth, the barely contained worry that has carved itself into the corners of her eyes and in the purse of her lips.

The sudden rebuff threatens to cut deep if Maxson's composure slips but an inch. He feels like schoolboy, so sure of himself one moment, and then flagging with wounded pride when the teacher chooses another. It's wrong. He should be above such a thing, shouldn't care, much less notice. Taking a deep breath, he forces himself to pretend that he doesn't. If he breathes deep enough, clenches his fists hard enough, the world will right itself once more.

For a little while.

Maxson isn't prepared when he arrives at his quarters an hour later and hears water running. That familiar leaky splatter against plexiglass that reveals a presence beyond his own before he's even opened the door. It occurs to him that he doesn't lock it; he's never had the need before now.

Either his timing is impeccable or God above grants him some small mercy because the moment his hand clasps the door knob, his heartbeat thrumming in his fingertips, that water shuts off and his domain goes quiet.

It remains so for one breath before Maxson throws open the door and charges inside. Feelings - he can't name them right now, maybe outrage, maybe lust, or disbelief, or all three - but feelings choke him and rattle his voice, even as his eyes search wildly. He knows it's her, that it has to be her. No one else has the nerve.

"What in God's name are you doing?" The words hardly sound coherent to Maxson's own ears. "What the hell are you doing, Talbot?"

He's never sounded quite so strangled. It's as though her small hands have wrapped around his throat and are squeezing and he can't swallow down the breath that is choking him because his chest will explode if he tries. Talbot, it seems, has had time to find a towel, his towel, and is standing there soaking wet and clean, clear of blood. A picture of a time long past, with her bare shoulders and her hair slicked back. Only the mottled skin at one temple mars her, reveals her to be human, and not some vision come to torment him.

She's looking at him. Toward him. But as he stands there, shaking and immobile with shock, Maxson swears she doesn't see him. She stares blankly, as if she is only now walking away from the battlefield she'd left a few hours earlier.

Her name is a snarl of two syllables. " _Talbot_."

Finally, just as his blood is threatening to rupture in his veins, she moves. She blinks at him and then those sharp, white teeth are shining out from a weak smile.

"You've got all the water pressure, Maxson," she says and as she tilts her head, a dampened strand of hair falls over her shoulder and Maxson can see the water trailing from it as it curves down her chest to the towel she holds so loosely. "I'm jealous."

Maxson can hear his own teeth creek as his jaw clinches. Across from him, Talbot takes one step and then another, delicate feet padding over the metal deck. She means to go around him. He almost lets her. She just reaches him, one arm slipping past his side to the desk behind him where she has placed clothes which he hadn't previously noted. The clean fabric is in her grasp the moment his hand clamps around her wrist and twists roughly enough to make her hiss. A curl of her lip and the jut of her chin are not enough to save her from him, to nullify this transgression.

"Get. Out." The words are clipped, ground out through bared teeth.

It is provocation enough and the Prydwen's Elder has no warning when she attacks. Her hips cant into his and the fabric of the towel catches against his jumpsuit trousers and pulls as she presses. She's warm and damp and it's seeping in through his clothes - boiling oil to scald him and drive him back, away from the fortress she's built. He can't curse her because the air in his lungs has started to bubble.

"I will," she replies softly, "But first things first."

"That's a _fucking_ order –"

"You're blushing –"

In a moment, she's against the wall, thrown there so hard that her bones rattle and then pinned by a hand she can't move, a hand he won't let her move. The skin of her throat is soft beneath his fingers, unprotected, unmarked, unowned, and bare, so bare. His other hand still grips one thin wrist, pressed now above their heads against the wall.

What can he say? What words, what orders are there to give when, with the slightest of actions, he could drop one hand and then spread her, slip his fingers into her and give her what she's been asking for, until she's so beyond words and coherency that she can't argue.

Beneath him, Talbot doesn't so much as wriggle. Her eyes have fallen closed and the only movement from her is the gentle rise and fall of her chest under his hand. Words won't come to him, not even as the rage inside his belly begins to give way to something…lighter. Something less suffocating.

Curiosity.

She should be fighting him, glaring up at him, daring him to pursue the battle further. Maxson is, again, thrown and the sudden tickle of fingertips against his jaw makes him flinch. Talbot relaxes in the vice he has trapped her in, her head lulling back to rest and it is all Maxson can do not to turn and watch as best he can as her hand runs gently along the scruff of his beard.

He grunts her name and the smooth skin between her brows furrows as her eyes screw closed even tighter and for the first time she shifts under him. He's surprised when she speaks, taken aback by the plea in her voice. The note strikes him and he nearly releases her.

"Don't," she says, "talk. Please, just…don't."

He never should have left one hand free. He knew better. Because now she's going to kill him. Not with a knife or a gun pulled from the holster at his hip - with her fingers against his jaw she leads him to his death. And he lets her. He watches as she pulls him to her, his face in her hand as if he could go anywhere, and suddenly she's closer than she's ever been.

Maxson wonders if he imagines the tremble of her hand when she stills him an inch from her lips. She won't look at him and in any other moment he would have called her a coward but he can all but taste her breath as she exhales one last time and then a final charge is made and he'll never be the same. Not after he swallows the cry that shatters in her throat the moment her lips close over his. She drinks him in as if she's drowning and Maxson can't stand against it, not as her teeth catch his bottom lip and pull until it's he who groans loudest, he who surges against her, covering her body with his. She's going to burn him up and she might take the Prydwen with her but her tongue is at the roof of his mouth and she tastes like blood and nuclear sunlight.

Talbot snatches free the hand that Maxson has pinned to the wall and soon his hair is wrapped around her knuckles as she pulls him down. _Down_.

She's going to consume him, damn it. It's the wrong way around. He's had it wrong. The nights he's fisted his cock in his hand have never been like this, where, in his mind, he's dominated her, put her back in her place and made her his. They're on their knees now in the middle of his quarters, not against the wall or the desk or the shower, no where he's thought he'd have her. She's made him kneel with just her hands and her mouth and Maxson knows in that moment that he'll never get up alive.

Her name is at his lips, at her skin when he breaks free for air and feels her pulse in the curve of her neck. Like she knows it, like she can hear it coming, this disobedience of her previous order, Talbot's hands fist in the collar of his coat and then her lips are whispering poison into his ear.

"Will you fuck me," she hisses, "if I say please?" The tightening of his hands at her hips must answer her because she rolls against him suddenly and goddamn her. Goddamn her as she makes him look at her, her eyes fixed shut and wet at the corners, and she strangles out a final plea. "I need you to –"

"Fuck you." Maxson snatches her hair and hitches her closer. " _Fuck_. You."

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	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter Ten_

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* * *

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Maxson has soft hands for a soldier. Scarred and short-nailed, but uncalloused compared to his subordinates. They are hands Talbot has felt before. On her wedding night and a hundred times after, she has been marked and worshipped by hands like those that now rest at the nape of her neck. It's not as hard as she had feared to remember Nate while Maxson sighs beneath her, his teeth scraping her collarbone. When she inhales, breathes _him_ in like air, or smoke, or carbon monoxide, it's outdated aftershave and testosterone that floods her senses.

Close enough.

"Kiss me," she demands and Maxson – _he_ – doesn't protest again. Past pomp and ceremony when his cock is straining against his jumpsuit and into her thigh. He thinks something of himself, believes himself a man – she'll make him into one by sheer force of will. Mold him into what suits her. Into what she misses. Not many hours ago, she had barely come out of the last battle alive, bullets and lasers and molotovs going off around her, and only one thought had rang clear in her mind above the din – that she desperately wished her paladin did not have to watch as she came so very near to being freed, to finally getting to where she belonged, where she should have been all along. She doesn't long for death, doesn't wish for it, but it should have claimed her a long time ago. There had been no tears in her eyes when she had faced it.

But then Danse had thrown that grenade and she had made that return trip in the vertibird with Nate's ghost beside her.

She needs to feel something. She's tired of dreaming.

And so she lets Maxson's tongue roam and hungrily swallows down all that he offers. His inexperience is well-hidden by nips and sucks and revealed to her only in the sounds he makes when she drives him harder and snaps her hips over the erect flesh below her.

A blank canvas, then, or close enough to it. One she can remake in an image gone by.

Talbot moves her mouth to Maxson's ear, lets him pant and squirm, and she almost whispers another name until she remembers. Instead, she leans back and she _has_ to open her eyes because he needs to believe in her, the way Nate did. Because if he believes, then maybe she can, too.

She doesn't catch the towel as it falls and bares her to him, but she does catch the way those blue eyes go wide in their desire. She's seen it before. Her weight carries her back until the floor grating is cold underneath her and Maxson has followed her without question. His lips sweep at her shoulder, even as his hands creep up her rib cage. Those strong fingers go still below the swell of her breasts and she holds his head low so that he can't see the twitch of her lips. Hardly a day went by that she hadn't admired in the mirror either new or fading teeth marks from where Nate had branded her, rougher the more she screamed for him. Even as his heartbeat races beneath her hand, Maxson requires the go-ahead, the signal that she's really wanting, that she wants _him_. Fingers snag in his hair and the command goes unspoken as she moves him lower.

That trimmed beard scrapes over one pebbled nipple and then the heat of his mouth is on her, engulfing her, and Talbot chokes back the cry of a name. He tongues her, laves away for a moment too little before moving to her other breast and the sudden loss of heat leaves her to raise her hips and drag him nearer, locking him into her.

She needs _more_.

"Your teeth."

She helps him along with the newest order as her back arches at the first gentle, testing nip. Maxson snarls, a sound that comes from his groin as much as it does his throat, and suddenly the timidity of his youth is gone and Talbot's insistent hands are ripped away and pinned just above her head. Maxson doesn't speak, not as he scrapes with teeth at her chest and then up again to her neck. He's a solid mountain over her, nothing but muscle and leather and hot breath. For a moment, Talbot struggles. By sheer size alone, she can't overpower him. He holds her down like the one before him once did and when he straddles her hips and sets up, Talbot is left only to watch. Watch and reel at the expanse of his chest and shoulders and the taper of his hips because it's almost like he's come from the same mold, like she wasn't imagining the similarity all this time.

Maxson's ever-present coat is shucked off, falling briefly over Talbot's feet until he reaches back and tosses it away. She can't watch his hands as they go for the buckles and buttons of his flightsuit – just his eyes, because they're watching her and the blue has gone almost to black. It feels like hours that she lays there, left to listen to the jangle of clasps and short breaths. She sees the moment Maxson's impatience goes too far; with one jerk, the remainder of the suit that covers him is peeled open and he might not be able to wear it come morning but he shrugs out of it as if he's past caring.

He's not quick enough to stop Talbot from raising herself up to her knees, as level with him as she can be.

"Talbot –"

No. No. Not _Talbot_. He can't say that. She can't let him, so she kisses him roughly to shut him up. She succeeds. Maxson's hands fall at her hips and drag her forward, as close as he can, until the smoothness of her body is flush with his, rough and hard and patchy with dark hair. The grey briefs he wears do little to hide his jutting erection. Talbot knows he feels the shiver that runs through her the moment she's curved into him; she feels the sting as his fingers clench at her and it hurts and God above bless him because it's exactly right.

One heavy hand sweeps down. He's brave now. Brave like he should be. Like she needs him to be. The ghost of his fingertips against her leaves her trembling and one more pass has her keening into the curve of his shoulder, open-mouthed and pleading, begging him to go deeper. Maxson raises his free hand to back of her neck, settling it there with a gentleness to which he has no fucking right. She could scream against it, almost does, until he pushes into her suddenly with two fingers instead of one and all thoughts of gentleness are gone. In her ear, he curses and soon she's empty and that damp hand is pawing at one thigh, opening her wider before diving in again.

He works her like he knows her and she's so thankful that she kisses him. Because it turns out he's just enough and she can let her mind rest and just bask, just enjoy the plunge and twist of his hand.

Maxson heaves against her after minutes, when her shuddering has become too much for him stand.

"What do you want?" His voice is tense with the promise of fucking and she can't fault him for it. "Talbot," her nails score his back at the name and he grunts once, "Tell me."

Talbot thinks she can show him better. He's still on his knees so it's nothing to roll down the last article of clothing that hides him from her. Maxson, for once, sees fit not to fight her. When he's as bare to her as she is to him, she takes a moment to admire him. Thick and heavy and, she notes with interest, intact, unlike Nate had been. It doesn't matter. He's powerful and beautiful and reaching for her. He lays claim to her mouth just as his hand closes over hers and urges her to touch him. She does so just to feel the rumble in his chest as he groans when her fingers close around him and slide once gently. He's velvet and throbbing, rock-hard power. She tests his limits, tests them until he's clutching at her wrist to stop her.

"Shh," she hushes him before he can speak again. She's ready for him, needs him, and she can't look at him too closely because he's looking at her like only Maxson would, ready to erupt. Her hands slide around his neck and she commands him with a single word.

"Up."

Maxson lifts her and before she can breathe again, he's inside her, filling her after lifetimes of emptiness and cold. With her face buried in his shoulder, she waits for a heartbeat and then wraps her legs around his waist. His first thrust is slow, taxing, and Talbot can't keep in the moan that rumbles through her.

"Damn it," she breathes and the broken-voiced curse must spur him on because Maxson tenses suddenly and then snaps his hips forward. Unleashed, he sets his pace and it's grueling. Beneath her hands, his arms flex and quiver as he raises her up and brings her down again and again until she's biting at her lip and he's grunting with every other breath. He ducks his head and catches a tender nipple between his lips; suddenly, he's not close enough, not deep enough, hasn't given her everything just yet.

And so she keens. For _him_ , louder each time his cockhead spreads her wide and drives back in again. She almost swears he says her name, but his voice is hardly more than a growl and she can't hear over the slap of skin. Her eyes drift blearily over to the bed and all at once her body aches to feel him over her rather than under her. She needs his weight on her, pinning her down, grounding her either outside of or, just maybe, _to_ this reality. She's not sure which. It could be both.

"The bed," Maxson doesn't slow at her words, not until she paws at the back of his head and then he's swept her up and they're stumbling in a tangle of limbs to the single-person bunk across the room. He sinks down over her and their screwing takes a sharp turn that makes the air catch in her lungs as if she's suddenly swallowed rocks. Maxson's looking down at her, raised on his elbows, and a hand is swiping lightly at hair that has fallen into Talbot's face.

And he looks so very much like Nate that her eyes well up before she can blink away the tears. So very like her husband. And so very unlike him. Because she can see Maxson now for what he is. Young, too young, and too hard because he had grow up too fast in a world that's too cruel.

It almost, _almost_ breaks her heart.

"Don't stop," she pulls him to her so that those young blue eyes aren't looking at her, "Don't stop –"

He shudders over her and his thrusts now are slower, calmed and less desperate. He whispers words in Talbot's ear and she whimpers at what he wants from her. She can't. Even as her body starts to thrum and she can't help but rock against him, pushing her hips into his and forcing his thrusts to shorten as they shake her to her core.

His muscles tense and tighten and just once, their pace falters, hips stuttering, as the threshold is nearly broken.

"Say it, Talbot."

Shit. _Shit_. She can't think, can't argue, can't even evade. Not as Maxson – him, _he_ – rolls his hips against hers and makes the world start to fade at the edges. Her thighs clench around him and her body locks down and he's not far behind her, because for all his bearing, everything about him is coming undone with him hilt-deep inside her.

"Say it for me –"

Maxson? Arthur? No, no. No. She wants to weep as warmth starts to blossom in her chest and her veins electrify. His voice is softer than it should be, gentle when it needs to be harsh, and if he's not careful, she will say a name and it will ruin everything.

Once more, Maxson pushes in and with it, he undoes her. She cries out – blindly, wildly – as her body snaps over that base crescendo. With a curse and her name, Maxson pulls himself away as he follows and his cock spasms between the heat of her thighs as he spills himself over her. One large hand darts between them and jerks until everything that can be milked from him has been emptied and they're left panting together, sated and so, so exposed.

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	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter Eleven_

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Talbot cries when she sleeps. Once her breath has slowed and her muscles have relaxed, when she should be free from worry and struggle...she weeps. The man who holds her, the trespasser, _feels_ it before he sees any evidence. She trembles just slightly, her cooling skin quaking beneath the calluses of his fingertips as they rove over any and all exposed flesh.

He had assumed she would flee from this crime scene of theirs before he'd even gone soft; she would brush away the evidence and lie with a smile before leaving him wasted and debauched, bare atop his rack.

But this woman - this new, sleeping stranger - surprises him and this time there is no fury rising in his chest to quell the sudden flutterings. When he had slid off of her, panting through teeth that were clenched and bracing for her inevitable departure, she had turned into him, closed her eyes, and drifted away.

And now, she weeps.

Quivering, shaking in her sleep, she is crying and the soldier's brain between Maxson's ears can't think of a single thing to do about it. Long moments tick by, like watching a grenade that's landed at his feet - a dud or flesh-ripping explosive - he doesn't know yet, but his breath stays lodged in his chest.

He can't stand it, afraid that if he waits a moment longer, staring down at her might be the last thing he does. So Maxson shakes her. Firmly, with his hand upon her shoulder, he forces her awake.

He even uses her title.

"Knight," he says. It sounds bitter and cold across his lips. Not unlike swearing in a church, he imagines.

Just once she shifts, pressing tighter to his chest and slipping her arm under his. No more tears fall, though his shoulder is damp beneath the place where her cheek rests. She could suffocate him if she wanted to, if she curls just a little closer, twines her legs with his. A second fire is stoking in his belly as her breasts press more firmly against him and her quim, sticky from where he spent himself over her, is low enough that he could fuck her all over again without having to move much at all. The thought and the fire behind it takes his hand between his legs to pull once or twice.

Fuck her awake or wake her to fuck her.

Or wake her and tell her go, tell her to get out from his quarters, his ship, out of his goddamn head. Because it's sitting in now, that tell-tale 'should've known better' feeling. It's burning in his belly, not hot enough yet to scald away the desire that's still building with every rise and fall of Talbot's chest.

If he thinks too hard, too long, on what he's done he might be disappointed in himself.

She sighs against him and there's a muddled syllable or two that escapes. Something with a long "A" that he can't quite hear. 'Wait' or 'hate' or maybe a name…Maxson makes an effort not to listen too closely as he prods her gently.

He's not blind. He's seen the marks on her stomach, thin and pale, just barely there around her belly button. Scars that claim her for someone else. Brands of a past life. A life he shouldn't care about and can't truly imagine, one of picket fences and family. She had, maybe still has, a son – a boy taken from her. And where there is a woman and child, there's a man. It's biology, simple fact...he understands but he marvels anyway because it's _Talbot_. Maybe it makes sense, though. Those perfected scowls and wordless threats that cause the hardiest among the Brotherhood to pause.

Was she always so caustic, wonders Maxson, nearly aloud, a natural-born pain in the ass? Lying beside her, his fingers poaching over her belly, he tries to imagine her in clean clothes with her hair done up and that same belittling smirk disguised beneath painted lips.

Rougher than before, Maxson shakes her and finally, she opens her eyes, blinking and sleepy.

"You need to go," the words are right there on his lips but he can't quite get them out, damn it, because she's started to stretch, skin over skin.

Suddenly, she swipes at her eyes, as though she's just registering the odd tightness of the skin there where her tears have dried. She flushes red down to her freckled shoulders before quickly hiding it with that fake grin he had hoped he'd fucked out of her.

"I need another shower," her words are quick, the first she can think of, "Come on."

She leaves him with an invitation, then she's up and untangled from him within moments and all at once regret snatches at him over having woke her. Maxson sits up, but the feeling clings to his back like a monkey.

An inquiry about the time floats over the light gush of water.

"Come on," she says again when he doesn't answer her, "But first find a damn clock, will you?"

That's not a difficult task. It's early. Earlier than he thought, and the relief floods him with an intake of breath. The world's still dark outside; they can still hide. Could ride one another again and again if they wanted.

Or she could leave like she should, like she's supposed to, the way he just knew she would. Leave in that same spiteful victory-retreat he's seen her make a dozen times before.

He must be dreaming, because she's not moving to do any such thing. Instead, the gentle slope of her bared back draws him to the shower. The scene looks too much like a skin page from one of those pre-war, girly magazines. He doesn't know how much of a red-blooded male he could claim to be if he doesn't go to her, this breathing, wet dream that's awoken in his room. Male, yes, the slowly swelling dick is proof of that. But maybe not a man, not the man he should be, the man he was before she came.

Maybe she's a lie. Maybe she isn't.

Regardless, he goes to her. Silent, like a ghost, as though he can hide his weakness from himself if he treads carefully enough. She molds her body against his and tilts her head back so that the water runs unhindered down her front from her breasts to her thighs before falling away against their feet. His arms rove over and around her as Maxson watches the steady droplets. He sees them fall, grazing off her and then gone, lost. She lets the water waste itself without a single damn given because she _can_. She basks because he lets her; how can he argue, after all, when her ass is clenched over the head of him...

 _Fuck her_ . The thought is sudden and angry, gunfire in his brain that makes him pull her closer. Manipulative cunt. A whore, all things considered. _No_ – that thought stops his heart and chokes him because it's wrong. She's got him thinking backward again. She's a pimp, more like it, a user. His fingers are clamping down at her hips so suddenly that she whimpers and jerks within his arms.

It's one of the rare occasions when her uncertainty is plain to see. She's as undecided as he is whether or not he wants to throttle her or spread her. But her tense body arches away from him when his teeth catch her ear and bite.

"Get out, Talbot," he snarls, lips curling against the reddening wound, "Get out."

She's wrenching herself away from him a breath later, the hands that had been so calmly resting over his arms moments before now flexing at her hips to cover the marks he'd left on her. The water there is tinted pink, Maxson notices, trickling slowly between her fingers. He'd hurt her. _Scored_ her, the same skin he had been exploring just a few minutes earlier.

The shame is immediate. It hits him like a cheap shot to the gut. Or it does until he manages the courage to meet her eyes. There's neither fondness nor betrayal in the cutting glare of her gaze. Her shoulders are squared despite the pain from the new welts at her hips, proud and…unafraid.

"Talbot," He's not sure if her name is an apology or a warning. "Just go..."

"You afraid?"

The question surprises him. The soft, sleep-addled voice from minutes before is gone, replaced by her usual mocking bite. In the time it takes him to blink, she's stepped into the path of the water, blocking it and leaving him exposed to the cold, empty air. Nearly chest to chest now, those bitter eyes peer up into his own. They see too much and he could hate her for it if he wants.

She answers her own question. "You are, aren't you?"

Her fingertips are like the sharp side of a knife as they run from his belly to his neck. It makes the hair on the back of Maxson's neck stand up. A threat, his brain registers too sluggishly, but what kind he doesn't know.

Talbot hums lowly to herself. "Been there, done that. Every day, Maxson."

Her wandering hand has traced down the length of his arm without his noticing. He's caught on her words, on this new admission. Something that probably wasn't meant for his ears. Not teasing, not like he first thought, but honest – maybe the most genuine thing she's ever said to him.

Not for the first time, she's full of surprises.

Maxson's sudden grip is impulsive and unyielding. A snatch and grab. He takes her hand as though she's got a weapon pressed to him and clenches down on the small fingers hard enough that she should be wincing. Talbot, however, only smiles – just the faintest, pleased twitch at the corners of her mouth. She's won once more, broken his will and stepped clear of any authority he thinks he has over her.

"Turn around," Maxson growls in a voice like concrete, or so he convinces himself, one that certainly is not desperate, not hungry. She obeys his order without a fight, for desire's sake or her own amusement, he doesn't care. The low-boiling anger and building confusion keeps him from being tender. It makes him itch like a finger on a hair-trigger. With one hand and his body weight, he pins her while his other goes between her legs and then into her without pretense. She arches, her hips canting back while thick fingers alternate between exploring her and rubbing at his own cock.

When he's ready, hard and throbbing, wet from the water and not yet from her, he bites at her shoulder. He means to mark her, own what little bit of her he can. For days she'll look at her skin and know that it wasn't molotovs or laser burns or iron that branded her. She's accepting enough, proves as much as one of her hands snakes free and reaches back to paw at his flexing thigh and drags him closer.

The groan that escapes him as he hilts himself inside her is one he'll regret later, along with every other sound he makes, every one she demands from him. He sounds as youthful as he is and she _revels_ in it. In return, each slam of his hips that follows is enough to jar her, nearly off her feet.

It's too much, rutting against this woman he should have thrown out by the roots of her hair. He's the goddamn Elder of the Brotherhood and the body under him could go cold on any assignment; it almost did on the last one. The very idea causes his pace to stutter and Talbot sucks in an audible breath as though she feels the uncertainty, too. The requisite obeisance he so desires from her won't ever be earned now; he's riding it out of her. Even as his hand squeezes against one plush hip, the resounding echo of coherent thought that _this_ knight of his shouldn't be any different plagues him, drives him harder.

Maxson can't care, not as he's pumping into her as if she's his, as if he could finish himself inside her without repercussion…

"Fuck, Talbot –"

She tenses around him and through teeth bared against his forearm, she mewls out a word Maxson isn't sure he heard over the water and the strike of flesh. He wants to ask her what it was, what she wants from him, but she says it again before he can grind the words out.

"Lale," she pants, "Call me Lale."

Lale, Eulalia, Talbot…the Brotherhood's Elder says them all until the knight's knees have buckled and she's shuddering violently against him. She's still shaking when he finishes, pulling out to hump against her bowed body until her ass is painted with what's left of him.

"Lale," it's an echo, one that's foreign and too personal all at once. Another thing he wasn't meant to hear but it rolls off his lips again until the fog has cleared from his head.

Too soon the water is shut off and she's whispering words Maxson can't understand for the ringing in his ears. Her hair, wet and long, hangs in her face and over her shoulders, a shroud for her to retreat behind. This time she doesn't miss a beat; her old tactics resume with a brutality that cuts him unexpectedly. Watery footprints follow her as she all but sprints across the room to snatch up the towel she'd cast off after her first shower. The same soft, uncovered back that had drawn Maxson to her earlier is turned on him now, an unbreachable wall between them.

"2 AM," she observes quietly and Maxson's positive she's speaking to herself. The clock nearby ticks forward a minute and makes a liar out of her before she's finished the words.

The two steps out of the shower are some of the heaviest of Maxson's life. Like wading through concrete with lead boots.

"Talbot –"

"I need Danse," she's whipped around to face him suddenly, panicked or spooked or both because he's moved too quickly or not fast enough, and it makes her words stumble over her lips. "I need to find Paladin Danse…in Medical. Probably. Maybe."

The damp towel is offered to him as if he's a plague patient she doesn't want to get too close to. Maxson wraps it around his hips for all the good it does. For just a moment, Talbot's stare falls at his chest and shoulders and she blinks as though to shake herself from a daze. Then that half-hearted, deceiving grin dimples her cheeks and she shrugs.

"Think Cade would blush if I asked what kind of protection he keeps around?" The nervous shuffle of feet ensues and the man in front of her can't even fault her for it because he doesn't know what to fucking say either. "Yeah, bad joke."

"Talbot," Maxson swallows hard. His next words leave the bite of copper in his mouth, bitter and cold to the teeth. "It has to be Talbot."

That smile is suddenly so sharp it cuts him. "Aye aye, sir."

She turns from him then and he lets her dress in silence. It doesn't take her long enough. By the time the clock reads 0204, her nakedness is hidden from him by Brotherhood fatigues.

He never suspects her to shoot from the hip. No, he's waiting for a carefully aimed, "Goodnight, Maxson," when without warning or mercy, she sweeps over to his side and presses up to slide her mouth over his. The cool leather of her bodysuit against his chest does nothing to shield him from the heat of her mouth as she catches his lip between hers.

"Talbot's just fine," she sighs when she finally releases him. "I never liked the other, anyway."

The small, muttered untruth almost ghosts past him. He almost could have believed it. It's only as she turns away too slowly that he catches that awful, deadly smile of hers and sees it fall flat before she can flee.

 _Liar_ , Maxson thinks to himself when she leaves him. She's a beautiful, goddamn liar.

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	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

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It's harder to look him in the eye than she expects. As she turns the corner into the medbay, that gaze of his makes her steps falter and her heart run away with her breath. His isn't like Maxson's, or anyone else's, not sharp and hard and cold. Could be her imagination, but there's a boyishness there he's never quite grown out of and when those distinctly warm eyes turn toward her, Talbot can do nothing but chew down the words she has planned and swallow.

She is spared, mercifully, when from some corner, Cade shuffles over and blocks her paladin from view. Most of him, at least; Danse is too big a man to hide easily. Or to be hidden from.

She feels...odd. Not dirty, not proud. Yet, there's no denying the roiling in her stomach. Probably the nerves that have taken up there since she slipped from the Elder's quarters. Because Danse might see, might figure it out, and Talbot's breath hitches again at the thought of his disappointment.

It's harder than it should be.

Finally, Cade ceases his doctoring and the moment she sees an opening, Talbot thrusts one of the glass bottles she's just swiped from the mess hall into Danse's chest.

"Nuka Cola," she chirps too loudly, "Ice cold if you pretend hard enough."

Danse can't smile, but the corners of his eyes crinkle and the warmth there sparks bright enough so that the woman in front of him can breathe again.

"No straws!" the medical officer scolds over her shoulder, "Might rupture the stitching."

Talbot rolls her shoulders in dismissal. "I haven't seen a straw in two hundred years, doc, but I'll keep an eye on the patient just in case."

Cade bites off a sharp response she doesn't hear because Danse is moving suddenly and the reprieve is over and it's back into the trenches once more.

The paladin stands, too big for the infirmary, even out of his armor.

"Dismissed?"

Talbot grins at the word, muttered as it is through the stitches that crisscross from Danse's top lip to one nostril. She watches him wriggle his nose when he thinks no one's looking, undoubtedly testing his limitations, and then shake his head when he's apparently unsatisfied with the results.

"Dismissed, Paladin. Come back in three days so I can take another look."

The already tight confines of the Prydwen's hallways seem unbearably smaller now that Talbot is alone with her mentor - her friend, a term less mutually exclusive now than it had been. Damn her soul if she ruins it, she thinks.

"You holdin' up, Danse?" she asks, gently, as they walk.

The big man grunts. He's had worse. The lack of conversation sets Talbot on edge, however, and she finds her far shoulder pressing along the bulkhead as they move. For once, she doesn't want to be too near him. He's Danse and he sees too much and says too little. Maybe, right now - if there is a God – this will be the exception.

Because the smell of sex, like perfume, clings to her even now and she's not certain she can wash it away. The peace-offering in Danse's hands remains untouched and Talbot wishes more than anything that he'd just go ahead and drink the damn thing.

Though, to be fair, she hasn't touched hers either.

A damn swell olive branch.

As though it's suddenly the single most important thing she can do, Talbot palms the cola bottle's top and twists. There's no give. Fuck. Not even soda will take pity on her.

A string of curses later and suddenly she's stopped in her tracks, Danse's large body blocking hers. The bottle is out of her hands and in his in the time it takes her heart to beat. He twists away the cap with a flick of his wrist. His own follows suit and Talbot has to blink several times before she recognizes the tilted cola that's been extended to her for what it is. She hopes he doesn't see her tremble when she accepts it.

"Cheers," she whispers and clinks her soda against his.

"Cheers, soldier."

She doesn't care the words are half-slurred and muffled by either numbness or pain or both. Because at least Danse said them and her mind can stop its spinning for a little while. Her sanity may have leapt off the bow of the Prydwen and into the Atlantic a few hours earlier but Danse doesn't need to know. Not right now.

They drink their colas and radiation has never tasted so sweet

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Talbot is summoned by Captain Kells the next morning at 0900. The time makes no nevermind to her; for the first time in a long while, she has been able to rest. Regardless of the four meager hours of sleep and the dated, probably carcinogenic caffeine trickling through her veins, Talbot sleeps. In the torporific stupor, the remnants of Maxson's touch had faded to familiarity as time and dreams put distance between their sweating bodies. The afterglow had hit her late - only beginning to pulse and ebb when she had sunk down into the firm embrace of her rack.

She had known that feeling. The residual soreness from bruising hands. The lasting reverberation of male breathing in her ear. Without the young Elder whispering over and under her, it had been easy to surrender the fight to ghosts and echoes.

Talbot doesn't remember that dream when she wakes, but it stays with her like the tang of peppermint in a mouth. She can't take the time for breakfast, isn't sure who will be there - not Danse, not under orders to rest - so she reports first thing to the Lancer Captain.

She never listens Kells speak after all these months, her brain tuning out his duty and honor voice like trash radio. Only where and what stick with her. There's no why, not ever, not from anyone here.

By 01100 hours, a vertibird is carrying her far away from the night before. The loneliness returns, beats away her brief peace, and Nate's specter is gone from the empty seat beside her soon after the pilot announces the drop off point.

She's alone.

No heavy presence at her shoulder, no creaking of armored joints, just the jarring whir of rapidly circling blades.

She's alone.

Descending into the mouth of the beast. The vast Commonwealth will swallow her.

Alone...and looking back into the scarred maw of Hell. The punishment's coming, her mind thrills, punishment for the night before. The respite seems a cruel illusion now.

The pilot doesn't hear her scream to go back, that she can't do this without Danse. He lowers the bird and the loss of her footing is the only thing that forces Talbot out onto the ground.

There are no ghosts here; even Nate is afraid of this place, this open-air tomb. A vast cemetery of concrete and scorched earth.

She's alone.

Arthur Maxson has damned her.

With the rising sun, forgiveness had found her unworthy. This is Hell


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

 _*Make sure you read the previous chapter first. I've posted them simultaneously._

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Talbot has never been hit by a laser rifle before.

One moment, she's walking along and the next, there's a blue ball of something hot charging toward her and then she's cursing into the wind, thrashing and fighting back the tears that are starting to burn her eyes. The Brotherhood sent her here to die. Or maybe karma's actually a thing. Either way, concrete explodes around her and the energy projectiles spit and fizz.

Once, in a black and white memory from long ago, Nate had said, "I _knew_ that I knew I was bleeding. I figured just knowing was a point in my favor."

Beside her head, another rapid-fire burst causes dust and dirt to kick up around her, catching on her shoulders and in her lashes like snow. Only it's dead summer and there can't be snow. Just heat - from the sun and the laser.

His first Christmas home and she had begged him to wear the blue sweater he looked so beautiful in, a V-neck that exposed a new, well-earned love bite for all his family to see. It revealed a scar, too. The one that marred his collar bone where shrapnel from his final war wound had cut and torn.

"Bled more than you'd think," she recalls him explaining, the almost shamed tone of his voice had stung her ears and made her eyes well up, "Thought it caught the artery. Then I realized that I knew that I knew I was bleeding..."

"A point in my favor."

The words are hissed and Talbot throws herself out from cover with Danse's rifle at her shoulder and soon there is quiet on the deserted street near Greenetech, save for sparking live wires at the mouth of a severed arm from her attacker laying nearby.

Handsome and young and dying...critically malfunctioning.

A synth.

It bends the mind, the sight before her. She's seen the robots, the ones like the sleuth in Fenway Park.

But this...this is what they've warned her about. She had thought he was a stray raider.

This boy-thing groans and spasms and the flesh of his arm rides up further to expose bone-colored...metal, maybe? Talbot doesn't know. It can't actually be bone. There's knicks and knacks and science that looks too much like meat and blood.

"How..." She can't form the question. How does he exist? How dare he prove Maxson and the others right about something?

His weapon is out of reach, clutched loosely in the detached hand lying several feet away. She sweeps it away even so.

As she leans over him, her rifle pointed at his chest, she is not braced for the wide eyed stare of wonderment. Awed, pale-colored eyes that blink and blink and blink.

"You...I've seen y-your face. Your," he coughs and groans, "picture."

Is it programming? Are they programmed to die? To reenact death throes? But, when those wide eyes wrench closed suddenly, it occurs to her that he _hurts_.

"What?" This time her voice is stronger. "What are you saying?" Talbot's words are cut off by a shriek. The boy's back arches and his legs kick out. Blood, or...existence, if nothing else, seeps from three holes in his chest and belly.

He chokes and sputters like any other man.

"Am...am I dying? Can I die? They n-never told us." Talbot watches as the fear sets in, the imminence of what's coming. "I am dying. I don't want to. S-stay."

Her heart clinches - he looks like a young man, just a boy. Or maybe he's a hundred years old; how should she know? Robots rust and creak and need oiling. She'd thought she'd be able to tell but looking at the expression screwed with pain and fear, he looks as human as she does. A child. One who's dying. One who's seen her before.

Being alone is likely the only thing that spares her a bullet in the head for what she does next. Even Danse might shoot her if he were here.

She kneels, if only to pry further before he...shuts down.

"What picture, kid?"

It's a mistake she can't undo. She doesn't know why she called him that. It had seemed right. So does the softening of her voice, a gentle lull that no one has pulled from her in two hundred years.

She goes on and when his remaining hand wraps itself in the felt lining of her jacket, she does not brush him away.

"You know me? How?"

From the flutter of his eyelids, she will be alone again soon.

"Hey, what picture?"

"I, I don't w-want to -"

"Die alone," she says the words for him, "I'm not gonna let you, kid. I'll...I'll stay, alright?"

Just a kid. A kid who had made the mistake of drawing on her first, a kid she's put three holes in and blown off his arm.

"Tell me, where'd you see a picture?"

"Father kept it on the s-shelf when I would clean. Your...dress was yellow. I thought, I thought it looked like the sunlight they told me about."

Talbot can't breathe. Choking on air.

"His eyes are like yours. I...saw them once...close…when I took too long to p-polish the windows. Please, d-don't, don't tell...Father you saw me."

And then he's gone. Like any other dead thing, the shine within his eyes vanishes, there and then not, a vapor and nothing more. Machines are supposed to shut down, explode even, on a bad day, not go with quiet whispers, clinging to a stranger.

The death leaves her still, her hands unmoving atop his shoulder. The information - those unprompted ramblings - leaves her dizzy. Mind spiraling, drunk and ineptly struggling to draw a rational explanation, Talbot only manages to breathe shallowly. In and out. Alive. She's still alive. He's not. Nate's not.

Alone again. With a smoking wound on one bicep. The tears in her eyes sting worse.

The cruelty is too much, burns too deeply.

Somewhere, in the minute free space of her mind, she realizes she should be sad for this boy's death, angry that some perverse past had driven him to desperation and the unprovoked pull of a trigger, or even be furious that not so far away, there is a man who would see her shot for the fact that her shaking hands grip so tightly to the patchwork coat of a so-called 'abomination.'

She _knows_. Talbot _knows_ she should do more than weep alone.

But all around her there is a sunny day and a cool, late September breeze. Manicured grass shifts beneath the toes of her pumps and she has to be careful because there's an ant-bed nearby. In her arms, the warm bundle she holds wriggles and she's caught between smiling brighter or turning further into her husband's embrace to better hide the less than girlish figure she hasn't seen in nine months. The yellow dress hides the pregnancy weight well and her squirming newborn takes those thoughts away as his milky eyes squint up at her. They'll be the color of her own, she just knows it.

She can _feel_ the sudden pressing at her shoulder. Shivers when Nate whispers into her ear because she can _hear_ him.

"Smile, honey!"

Just in time, she looks up to be blinded by the flash of a camera. The moment is captured.

Preserved.

A picture that had rested in the top drawer of a bedroom dresser in Sanctuary Hills.

Talbot leaves the boy where he lays. Stumbling steps carry her forward and she can't see for the blur of regret in her eyes. Alone, she walks on. And this time, this time she is thankful because there is no one to see her grieve.

…..

For nearly three days, Maxson's world returns to normal. Orders are given and followed. Rest. Wake. Repeat. He could even set a clock by the progression of the third day.

The surprise, then, pummels him like a cannonball to the chest. Lancer Captain Kells appears unannounced and nearly leaves the younger man slack-jawed. Especially when he hears Talbot's name and rank being recited back to him in a well-rehearsed sit-rep.

"I've received no report in over forty-eight hours, sir. Our outpost at Cambridge has seen no sign of Knight Talbot herself."

"What of the patrol that accompanied her?"

It's only when Maxson feels Kells' breath on his chin that he realizes how close he has moved to the officer.

Kells is undeterred. "There wasn't one, sir. It was simply a retrieval from Greenetech Genetics. The area had been cleared two days prior. Knight Talbot was to acquire the remaining tech and deliver it to the Cambridge scribes." He continues as though he's anticipated Maxson's next question. "There have been no reports of gunfire from our soldiers in the Cambridge vicinity."

"She just...disappeared, Captain? What of the tech?"

"Scribe Haylen found it deposited at the entrance to the compound last night, Elder."

All at once, the Brotherhood's Elder plummets from growing concern to rage. It swallows him whole and doesn't have the decency to spit him out.

"Goddamn that woman!" Maxson snarls and regrets it a half-second later when he sees Kells' eyes widen at the vehemence in his outburst. He curses her like he means it; hell would do better to take her before Maxson gets a hold to her.

He can't breathe beneath the weight of his coat and the shuddering exhalation of his words sounds weak and tired to his own ears.

"Find me Paladin Danse, Captain. Dismissed."

He is left to stew - to _remember_. Even now, he recalls the way Talbot had keened into his shoulder, the way she had forced him closer, deeper. She had taken the want from him and left him with a need. The need for company, for challenge, for the base, burning desire to have a wet and willing place to bury himself. For the first time in three days, Maxson _wants_ to kill her.

The seven short minutes it takes for the Paladin to report are not nearly enough for Maxson to dam the flood of anger that is building with each passing thought.

"Elder Maxson -"

"You know her best, Danse. Where would she be?" He rounds on the man, eyes the stitching and the bruises and suddenly wants to laugh because this is what it's come to. Dependency. Damn that woman.

"Knight Talbot -"

"Yes!" the confirmation is ripped from his chest. A stupid question. "Who else? Have you been briefed?"

"Negative, sir."

"She's gone again," Maxson does not miss the shift in the other man's stance, the uncertainty...and something else. Something that isn't quite surprise. Just the slightest dip of Danse's heavy brow and a glance toward the ground.

Ah, disappointment. The feeling's mutual.

The added slight of, "Most likely of her own accord," that follows is said for meanness and Maxson isn't immediately sure why. But the words are meant to dig at the Paladin, barbs intended to sting. He tells himself it's due to Danse's failing as a mentor; there is no other reason, can't be.

Maxson takes a step nearer the man, has to look up to meet Danse's eyes, and suddenly, inexplicably, hates the man all the more intensely. For years, Danse has been the tallest man in the Prydwen's roster - a fact based in quantifiable feet and inches. Maxson's never noticed before, never cared. Never felt so fucking inadequate in the presence of another man.

He exhales slowly and there's a burning behind his back where his nails have broken through the skin of his clasped palms.

"Where would she be, Danse?"

Something in his voice changes; he feels it as surely as the Paladin hears it. Danse, in all his experience soldiering, catches onto it like laser fire at midnight.

Like a target who moves just out of the crosshairs as the trigger's pulled, Danse straightens and for the first time in his career, there is the faintest flash of defiance in the man's eyes.

"I don't know, Elder."

It's a goddamn, fucking lie.

Peas in a pod, Talbot and Danse.

Sedition begets sedition, it would seem, no matter the soldier. The woman isn't even present and yet she's bleeding into everything, polluting it. Maxson can still feel her hands raking down his back, had seen the marks there this very morning as he'd dressed. Almost idly, amidst a flare of temper, he wonders if he were to peel back the leather of Danse's fatigues, would the lesser man have the same? Branded like property?

Before Maxson can so much as draw back, Danse speaks again, all calm seas and wooden, tamed emotion.

"By your leave, Elder, I'll report to Cambridge Police Station immediately. I'll find her, sir."

The Elder hates that he believes the man, when the very last words out of Danse's mouth had been a lie.

"Get out," spit flies from between Maxson's lips, a rabid animal, "Find her, Paladin, or don't come back."


End file.
